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KNOCK, AND THE DOOR SHALL BE OPENED!

Pradeep Prakash
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This book is lovingly dedicated to my spiritual role model Sant Gulab Singh Ji, the saint who transformed men into saints.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While bringing this book to life, I realised it is a big task in which many people contribute. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the important contributions of many of my friends and colleagues. I thank my dear friend Professor Kuldip Jaidka for his valuable feedback and comments. He has been my mentor during my adolescent days and introduced me to the great saint who transformed my life. I gratefully acknowledge the contributions of various trainers with whom I worked closely.Special thanks go to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Dr MMPAkhouri, Mr Oswald Summertron, Ms Pearl Drego, Mr Parthasarathi,Dr NP Singh, Mr Tony D Souza, Dr Ishwar Dayal, Dr Udai Pareek, Dr Mahaveer Jain, Dr Prayag Mehta, Ms Rita Sengupta, Mr Rupert Rosario, Ms Sushma Sharma, Mr Sanjib Basu. I am grateful to Mr S Rajgopal, ex Chairman MTNL, for going through the manuscript and giving important suggestions and comments.My students of Masters in Building Engineering and Management at SPA, New Delhi also deserve my thanks for providing me their feedback about the contents of the book. This book is in your hands due to crucial contribution of Mr Anil Krantz, my publisher. Thank you Anil for your useful suggestions and bringing this book to the readers. Credit for beautiful cover design goes to Ms Sneha Nilanjan Das. Thank you Sneha for your labour of love. My father, Ram Prakash and mother, Chameli deserve special mention.All along, I have been getting their encouragement, feedback and support for this 5

book.My immediate family of brothers, Sanjeev, Rajeev and sister, Rashmi have always been supportive of my adventures and misadventures. They deserve my thanks in ample measures. Last and most important thanks go to my wife, Poonam for her invaluable support in completing this project. I feel incomplete without her contributions, criticisms and support.How can I thank fully my little son Samik, who has been my little professor teaching me many secrets of this life?

CONTENTS
PREFACE ............................................................ 11 CHAPTER 1 WHO AM I IN THIS UNIVERSE? ...................... 18 CHAPTER 2 THE POWER TO MAKE MY LIFE .................... 27 CHAPTER 3 MANAGING SUCCESS GOALS ...................... 33 CHAPTER 4 FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT .......................... 42 CHAPTER 5 FEELINGS-THE MUSIC OF LIFE ..................... 54 GETTING UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH A SELECT FEW FEELINGS ............................. 62 ANGER, THE FIRE IN MAN ....................... 62 HOSTILITY- ITS IMPLICATIONS AND MANAGEMENT ........................................... 65 CHAPTER 6 IMPLEMENTATION THE ELUSIVE FACTOR 69 FROM DISTRACTIONS TO FOCUS ................ 78 STAYING IN TOUCH WITH GROUND REALITIES ............................................................... 83 CHAPTER 7 LEARNING TO LEARN ..................................... 89 ART OF LISTENING TO THE WISDOM OF THE BODY ............................................................ 93 CHAPTER 8 GROUPS POWER TO TRANSFORM MY LIFE 97 CHAPTER 9 ATTITUDES THAT HELP ................................. 102

LIFE IS LIVED BY LIVING IN THE MOMENT .... ..................................................................... 103 MONEY- ITS POWER AND IMPOTENCE ..... 106 WORK- THE AXIS OF OUR LIFE ................... 109 YOUTHFULNESS- OUR NATURAL SPIRIT 111 SEX-THE FRUIT OF LIFE ................................ 113 CHAPTER 10 THE ULTIMATE BLOSSOMING! .................... 119 CHAPTER 11 THE SPIRITUAL AWAKENING ....................... 126 1. EXCELLENCE IN PURSUIT OF SPIRITUAL JOURNEY ................................................... 126 2.IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL MASTER IN OUR LIFE .................................................... 128 3. WHAT SPIRITUALITY HAS MEANT FOR ME ..................................................................... 135 4. LOVE, ARE YOU GOD? ............................... 138 CHAPTER 12 HABITS THAT PROMOTE WELLBEING ....... 143 APPENDIX-I STRESS IN OUR LIVES ................................... 150

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PREFACE
We all live but know very little about life. From where have we come and where we will go after death is a great mystery. Nobody has any valid answer to this mystery. But life goes on nevertheless. In this book, we are going to delve into the phenomenon of everyday life, which is not so much of a mystery. For all of us, life seems to be an unending flow of fulfilment or frustration of myriad desires that keep arising. In the process we rejoice or suffer depending upon the outcome of these desires.Life becomes an endless game of achieving fulfilment of our myriad desires. Therefore, fulfilment in life will depend crucially upon the quality and quantity of our needs and desires. As human beings we have hierarchy of needs which are quite large in number. Skilfully managing this complex structure of our needs and desires to attain the maximum possible fulfilment including spiritual enlightenment becomes an important task for all of us. This book has an important message . There is hope for suffering humanity. It is that each one of us is heir to the eternal life to which no sorrow, suffering or death can reach. To realise this power, a framework to comprehend life from macro and micro perspective has been developed. I invite my readers to further build on this empowering framework ones own understanding of life. This book is meant to be of practical help in enhancing the achievement of fulfilment in life by empowering oneself. There is this modicum of free will available to every human being, which can enable us to realize this hope of eternal life. Most of us do not use this power of 11

free will and ignorantly fritter away the same by blaming the world for our sufferings. Fulfilment is not possible without fully utilizing the powers that are there in us waiting to be tapped. The powers that most of us are not using because we are ignorant like the beggar who begged all his life unmindful of the treasure that lay hidden beneath the surface where he begged everyday. His ignorance was his misfortune. What are these powers and how can we tap them is taken up in different chapters of this book.. The responsibility to eliminate ignorance is ours, this book just shows some glimpses of that path. So what we get out of these insights and ideas is entirely dependent on us, the readers. Here I am reminded of Jesus telling his disciples about farmer throwing seeds on the ground. Some fall on fertile land, some on stones from where the birds eat them away while some just waste away. I wish that most of these seeds will fall on the fertile land! I congratulate you on getting this book to read because it has the possibility of opening many new avenues for fully realizing your potential. Secondly, it also shows your interest to enhance the quality of your life. This is a sign of Gods grace- your desire to grow as a better and happier human being and then doing something about it. Let me introduce you to the plan and design of this book. The first chapter, Who Am I in This Universe?, covers the existential status of man as well as structure & dynamics of personality in everyday life. A new structural element of personality , The Spiritual Self, an eastern concept, has been introduced for the first time in the framework of western psychology. The dynamics of structural elements of person-

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ality have been repeatedly processed in different context in the subsequent chapters. The contents of this chapter form the base for other chapters. New and more appropriate nomenclature, easily understood by lay person has been introduced instead of technical jargon of personality psychology. In the second chapter,The Power To Make My Life, main theme of the book has been taken.Man can expand his Free Will. The Free Will dynamics have been explained for the same leading to greater freedom and fulfilment in life. The person should make the most of it by taking charge of his life instead of blaming others for his misfortunes and difficulties. Few illustrations, which are real life examples in Indian context, have been offered to validate the theory. The third chapter, Managing Success Goals, takes further the empowerment theme. Illustrations on how one can avoid falling into the rationalisations for not achieving the success goals enable one to understand deeper the process of achieving success using ones free will. The attitude of a person who can reach the success goals emerges from the framework presented. It offers a new and unique way to assess the probability whether the person will achieve his goal or not. In chapter four, From Darkness To Light, the tried and tested means of eliminating ignorance and developing oneself have been explained. Self-development is another major theme of this book, which is linked to the empowerment theme dealt earlier. What it means to develop and mature is explained followed by the processes that help in the same. First of all, one need to focus and give ones energy in this direction i.e. makes a choice to grow. Few techniques such as meditation, jour13

nal writing , role modelling, personal growth workshops, and feedback have been illustrated. Chapter five is devoted to feelings. FeelingsThe Music Of Life, takes the theme of self-development and empowerment further by highlighting the importance of feelings for good life and their management. Select feelings, like anger and hostility have been further analysed in minute detail.Proper understanding and application of these insights can help one to get rid of problems with such feelings. Chapter six, Implementation- The Elusive Factor, tackles issues involved in poor execution of our noble resolves.The crucial issue with self-help tips and techniques is that they are difficult to put into practice. And that makes most of the tips useless.Processes oriented explanation given in this chapter on the dynamics involved in implementing the change for growth clears the cobwebs in this respect. Another important dimension of implementation is our skill of learning, which has been dealt in the next chapter. Chapter seven talks about Learning To Learn. It presents the model for learning given by David Kolb, but a little modified. It is illustrated with examples from my fiascos and successes. Moreover, importance of risk taking and attitude towards learning has been explained in terms of their role and dynamics. One can expand ones learning arena by using the wisdom of the body. This requires sensitivity to the clues given by the body in response to environmental and inner consciousness. Chapter eight,Groups Power To transform My Life, takes up empowerment through group dynamics. 14

Groups exercise tremendous power over the individual. How can one harness this power for ones growth and well being by understanding the group dynamics is the theme of this chapter. This empowerment of self is crucial for greater achievements in life. Both healthy and unhealthy power of the group has been illustrated,ranging from producing a fidayeen (a suicide terrorist) to an enlightened soul. Chapter nine talks about, Attitudes That Help. Importance of work, living in the moment, youthfulness, money and sex is discussed.This chapter begins by defining what an attitude means and its various components. The different selves of the personality are involved in the expression of the attitude. This chapter demystifies the secret of quality living. Chapter ten, The Ultimate Blossoming, talks about the fully fuctioning human being. It is based on research done by Abraham Maslow on self-actualising people. However, here the results have been put from the perspective of the three primary selves of the personality. This makes it easier to take up change programme for self-development. It offers the roadmap for people to achieve their full potential. Naturally this chapter has been placed at the last part of the book because it is the culmination of the selfdevelopment from the perspective of western psychology. The spiritual awakening follows this, which has been taken up at the end. Chapter eleven,The Spiritual Awakening and chapter twelve, Habits That Promote Happiness are devoted to what the Indian spiritual heritage has to offer through its saints & sages and scriptures. Chapter eleven, covers this aspect very briefly but sufficiently to give the glimpse of its greatness for quality living. This chapter is 15

based on my life experiences with the saints and how it influenced my life. I am sure it can be a moving experience for a sincere person. While the last chapter twelve, is based on the teachings of Indian scripture, Patanjalis Yoga Sutras. How they can be applied to bring about qualitative change in ones life is the theme of this chapter. This has been taken up as the last chapter as it is prescriptive in nature and the principles offered have been tried and tested over three millennia of Indian life. am attaching in appendix a write-up on stress.This has been added in the appendix because it differs from other chapter in its flavour. It is a scientific review of stress based on my post graduate thesis.Stress is a wide spread phenomenon and this essay offers useful analysis and techniques to manage the same. Overall, this book brings together many new perspectives and insights on the subject. It is a professional work targeted at common person.I am sure it will be an enjoyable experience for you. I look forward to hearing from you. Please feel free to contact me with anything that you wish to share. I can be reached through my email: pradeepprakash2001@yahoo.co.in Welcome to this world of inner growth!

New Delhi 25th December,03

Pradeep Prakash www.pradeepprakash.com

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CHAPTER 1

WHO AM I IN THIS UNIVERSE?


Finding joy in life is a challenging task. Why some persons enjoy life and feel fulfilled while others suffer in emotional turmoil? This is an important question which I asked myself ten- twelve years ago. It was triggered in me in a marketplace I had gone. I saw there, one old student of our college who was giggling away to glory. And here I was standing feeling miserable. Quite often I would be unhappy, despite all my knowledge of psychology. There was something amiss, but I was totally clueless. How could I go about bringing happiness in my life? Fortunately for me life is very different now and what I share in these pages of the book are the discoveries about human nature and our lives that are of practical help in bringing fulfillment. My personal growth journey has not come to an end; it seems it only begins and never ends. Any aspect of life is so vast and complex that despite spending lifetimes trying to grapple with the mysteries of the phenomenon we get to know very little about it. Take few examples. My brother is a doctor of Rheumatology and he has spent his lifetime in this field, still he says he understands barely five percent about this field. I have spent more than twenty five years in 18

understanding the mysteries of mind, what I have come to know is not even a tiny fraction of what I do not know about it. My music teacher says the same about what he knows of music. This understanding gives me humility and openness to learn more of life and wonder more about it. I look with awe and wonder on this phenomenon of life! Human personality is one of the most fascinating aspects of life on earth. It is a wonder of wonders, full of infinite possibilities. Nobody knows from where we come and where we go after death. The bottom-line is that we are all striving for joy and avoiding sorrow. In their attempt to realize the above aim, different persons have formulated different theories. Some believe that one should strive for money wherein one can obtain all that is needed to feel happy. Some pursue learning, while others pursue social achievement and power. All these constructs have some element of validity in it.This is borne out by the fact that we continue to suffer despite achievement of these goals. Where is the joy which lasts? Or is this search of eternal joy a mirage not achievable but only visible at the horizon? To answer these questions we need to probe deeper into the dynamics of our personality. There are various parts of personality, which coexist and dynamically relate to each other. These can be broadly classified into following four categories: 1.The Instinctive or Real Self: This is the primordial and primary part.It is the childlike self of me in which all my instincts are located. In common parlance we call it the heart. In it lies my wants, desires, likes, dislikes and most of my feelings. My life is by and large geared towards fulfilling 19

these needs of the instinctive part in me ( It is similar to what Freud called Id and Berne called The Child). I want to sleep or eat or have sex or enjoy movie or music or play game or read or watch TV or achieve status and power or have a beautiful wife/girlfriend or car or feel jealous or happy or miserable or violent or frustrated or playful or touched. All these originate from and occur primarily in this part. That is why I call it theInstinctive Me. It is the human nature in its pristine glory. You can experience this in you right now if you locate what are your feelings in the here and now. Look around and experience what other people are feeling and possibly you are seeing their Instinctive Self. It is always in the here and now, and in the process so to say. A process is a fluid, changing, transforming, happening phenomenon like a chemical reaction and The Instinctive Me is always in process because my feelings are moving, shifting, vanishing, replacing all the time. The real experiencing happens in this part. Most of our psychic energy comes from this primordial self. It is a very attractive part of the personality.That is why children are so fascinating because in them it is still so fresh and vigorous. And each one of us carries the little boy/girl in our personalities forever even when we grow up. Unfortunately as we grow older, we lose touch with this part of our personality. This is the crux of most of our problems in life. It is my common experience that when I ask people what are they feeling, 95 out of 100 persons are not able to locate their feeling. I was also quite out of touch with it earlier and that was the reason I was unhappy often. My journey has been one of revitalizing this part of myself. The ulti-

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mate flowering of personality involves blossoming of this childlike self in us. And it requires sharp awareness and sensitivity for it. I can slip into and out of this state (The Instinctive Me) at any moment depending on various factors. This process is part of my personality dynamics. 2. The Social Self: This part of me is the one that I acquire as I grow up, initially from my parents and later from other members of my society. This is the repository of shoulds, should nots, rights, wrongs, good, bad and other such judgements mostly cultivated or inculcated.. Herein are stored all the admonitions, love, approvals/disapprovals, rules, laws given to me as a child with full fidelity to the form in which it was given. It is also operationalized in the form of knowledge of how to act, behave or do in a social setting. For instance how I dress, do my work, spend my leisure time is all influenced by this part of me. It also creates many conflicts in me e.g. the Instinctive Self of me wants to play outside while the Social Self of me wants me to study. In Social self, most of the concepts have been taught. They have been taken as it is without editing by us when we were children because it came from people who know everything from the little childs perspective. It is similar to what Freud called the Superego and Berne called The Parent. This part is the repository of the culture of my society. Culture impresses its values, norms and modes of behaviour on me through the process of socialization. I am similar to my siblings in many ways and that is because of this part of our personalities. Some of our common problems and joys in life originate from this 21

similar conditioning at home in our growing up. Cleaning of contamination of this part of me has been a long drawn and continual process that is still on. For instance, complete freedom from gender bias is still a dream for me. Similarly, my struggle in the self worth and giving dignity to others is far from complete. I have come a long way in this process of Social Self decontamination , yet there is quite a way to be covered. Socialization means that external agent need not control me to behave in the way it wants me to behave; I have acquired internal controls which make me behave that way. For example, no social agent need sit on my head to tell me that I should be honest in my dealings. My own internal Social Self makes me behave honestly; if I do not behave such then my instinctive self is pricked ( You rascal, you are a dishonest fellow!) by this part and is made to feel guilty. If I act honestly then this part of me rewards me by enhancing my self esteem or makes me (Instinctive Self) feel good about myself. However I am not completely at the mercy of culture in its acquisition and retention, I can modify it by my own will too and that paves the way for cultural progress and self-empowerment. Nevertheless, it is one of the toughest tasks of personal growth that I talk about. More on this process later. 3. The Executive Self: This is the information processing part of me and is the executive that mediates between the various kinds of conflicts of the Instinctive and the Social part of my personality. It has got the toughest job to do. It is the main information processor and does most of the original thinking. It appraises the objective reality. While reading this book now, if you relate these

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concepts with what you already know then this part of your personality is active right now. Commonly we call it the head part of personality. Most of the concepts have been thought out here. Strong Executive Self is a great asset and is built with hard work and intellectual stimulation. In other words, it is our problem solving capacity. This is an important source of our inner power besides the above two selves. Harnessing the power of this self requires steadfast effort in strengthening our information processing skill and reality appraisal capacity. 4. The Spiritual Self: This part of me is a choice-less witness of all the above selves and remains eternally untouched and untainted by all that happens in the three parts of the personality. There are no concepts, thoughts or feelings here. However this part is the one that gives us the sense of being alive. It is exactly the same in all-living beings and is the mystic part of our personality, beyond time and space. Since it is beyond time and space andtherefor ineffable. It is better not described and left as a mystery to be unraveled by the seekers. The most important fact is, it is the hope of mankind. It is the salvation for all, it gives our life the dreamlike quality or a play-leela (sanskrit word for sport). It is perfect in all respects, and remains nirlipt untouched. What I have described above is only a gross approximation of the reality of our personality. Or I may say, these are the basic pillars and beams of the building (person), there are many more details which need to be filled in to make the complete building (person) which is 23

quite an elaborate and unique for each building (person). The quality of our life depends on the dynamics of these parts. How they interact and influence each other, whether harmoniously or disharmoniously? Unless there is shift in the dynamic balance of these parts no meaningful qualitative change in life is going to happen. For instance, the change will be meaningful and visible if I stay more in Instinctive Self (say childlike playfulness) than Social Self (say serious task oriented) now in the new equilibrium of these parts than during earlier equilibrium. Optimizing the performance from these selves can unleash tremendous power in us to transform not only ourselves but also the social setup around us. This requires proper guidance and mentoring which can be provided by those who have already traversed this path besides excellent learning from the experiences of our lives and little bit through books and other means. Books have limited role but they can certainly point the way. No wonder that training programmes by learned trainers/gurus is one of the good ways for selfdevelopment. However, let me caution that fakes abound in this trade as well and it is difficult task for beginners to distinguish the genuine from the spurious. One way to know the genuine guru is by seeing the transformation in our personalities and lives by his/ her direct or indirect influence. Another characteristic is that they empower one and do not make a person dependent on them in any way. Third, they provide an excellent role modeling of the behaviour and values they espouse. They walk the talk. No wonder, they are a rare breed and it is indeed a privilegeto find such a mentor. Finding joy in life is a challenging task.Because most of the time the first three parts of personality are in

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a state of continual conflict with each other. In order to find harmony and peace the first requirement is that we understand this Kurushetra, the battlefield in our selves. The Macro Picture: Now I would shift gear. Earlier I have depicted the micro picture of human personality. Let us now have the panoramic view of our life in terms of our place in this universe. This planet Earth itself is tiny ball revolving at great speed around the Sun while spinning around its axis. And our Sun, the center of our mother Earths attraction, is itself a tiny ball of fire, one amongst the millions of other stars in our galaxy. This galaxy of our Sun is one of the millions of galaxies floating around in this Universe. Who knows this universe is also a tiny universe amongst other millions of universes unknown to man? Man, who thinks he is the center of this universe, is one amongst the millions of species on this planet, however it is one of the most powerful species so far on this planet. What is our place in this universe? And what about the significance ofour problems, that seem so insurmountable, in this universe? What is our power in this mighty world of universes to influence our life? Is it predetermined, in the hands of gods who preside over my destiny or do I have the power to make my life? Am I an important and loved member of this gigantic family or an unknown and powerless creature at the mercy of unknown gods? My belief is that we are the loved ones taken care of so wonderfully (remember how our parents loved us?)! This also brings us to the eternal questions we ask about our life, namely, what is this life all about? Why I am here? What is the purpose of my life? These questions are very potent. Let me share my experience with 25

these questions. When I turned fourteen, I found myself obsessed with these questions. Day in and day out I was struggling to find the answer for them. I lost interest in my normal life and felt very detached because unless I know why I am here for and what is the purpose of all the activities, there is no motivation to act. I also felt very alone in this struggle because I asked this question from all the seniors and aged persons but no answer really satisfied me. There were times when I felt miserable not only because of this obsession but also because of my inability to handle my sexual, relationships and other emotional ups and downs. I look back at that time with lot of compassion for myself and can feel similarly for most of the adolescents I come across, who go through similar travails. The answers I got from people might have been correct too, but there was no way to find out about the veracity of the same. The story of a Five Blind Men And The Elephant came alive to me. This story is about five blind men who were going through jungle and suddenly barged into some fat, rough, strangely shaped object. All the blind men touched and experienced it from different places and defined this object differently depending upon their experience of this fat object. They were all right, in their own way, based on their different experiences but no one could exactly define that it was a fat animal called elephant. This happened because, none of them had the holistic view of the same. I had very little wisdom to understand what was happening to me but some kind of maturation was taking place all the same. This obsession continued with varying intensity for almost a year and then it waned. I do not

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exactly remember what answer I found, but I found some answer suddenly one day. I strongly recommend that every mature man must struggle with these questions. My experience is that by certain age, most of us have actually done it and found our answers, valid or invalid. These answers actually influence our life to a considerable extent. For me, these questions started my spiritual quest in life and gave a new direction to my life energies. To a large extent this quest is responsible for the passion I have for spiritual aspects of life and also my desire to spread the same quest amongst all the people around me. Why not hanker after something that lasts?

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CHAPTER 2

THE POWER TO MAKE MY LIFE


The central theme of human life from birth till death is empowerment. Let me bring you back to our work-a-day world life again, and raise the central theme of this book, namely self-empowerment. By this high sounding word self-empowerment, I mean fully utilizing the powers I have as a human being to influence my life. Most of us are generally ignorant of these powers in us and hence the need to empower ourselves. The questions that we raised in the last chapter also empower us by making us face the reality of our mystery filled life. I am attempting below to unfold a seemingly minor facet of this mystery. An ancient question that man has often asked is about his freedom to make his life. Is my life pre-destined or I determine the course of my life? This question has to be answered in the background of perspective from which we look at life. From the broadest perspective of life, we can see that we have no hand in the making of genes that determine our basic system of body and mind. Neither do we have any say in the entire ecosystem that supports the life on this tiniest of tiny planet on this universe. Of-course we never had any say in the way this

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entire gigantic universe has been designed, made and run. All the same it runs just perfectly to support life on this infinitesimally small planet called Earth by supplying it energy from billions of mile away star called Sun. On the face of it, what appears from above, it seems that our life is predetermined. We do not seem to have any control over it from a macro perspective. Now let us look at life from a micro perspective. I and you have the power to change our attitudes, values and self-image. We have the power to behave differently in different circumstances; react or act based on our power of discrimination. We can use our creativity, imagination, will power and effort to move things. This power definitely we have, howsoever tiny it may seem from the larger view of life. But this so-called tiny power can make the difference in our lives; the difference between hell and heaven, to say the least. I can give the analogy of a dog moving behind the master chained by a three-meter long rope. The dog has no freedom to move away more than the ropes length, however it has the freedom to move as far as the rope allows. The rope can be short or very long. There is another dimension to it. If the dog is responsible and does not create nuisance on the road for others and also follows the masters commands then the master may keep him free without the rope too. It depends on the level of responsibility the dog displays. This analogy is gross approximation of mans freedom to determine his life. Different people use the power they have to varying extent. The degree of power one can have is directly proportional to the degree of responsibility one takes for ones life. It is a matter of ones understanding 29

that one has the resources of power within ones reach to make the difference in ones life. Some people may be completely blind to the power within them and live a hopelessly miserable life blaming others for their predicament. Blaming others, i.e. making others responsible for ones situation is one of the commonest style of operating for self dis-empowered persons. By blaming others we are becoming blind to the power we have to make a change in our lives. When others are responsible for my predicament, it is comfortable feeling not to blame oneself and bask in the feel-good world where others are at fault. But for this comfortable feeling, which lasts for a short-while, one has to pay a heavy price in the long term which can be bad relationships, bad moods, recurring cycles of misery and so on. This also means no change in oneself for the better because there is hidden assumption that others are at fault for my condition and there is nothing for oneself to do. One does not make use of ones power and on the contrary contributes in making ones life miserable whereas one blames and believes that others are making him/her miserable. Taking responsibility does not necessarily means blaming oneself. It may mean that I can manage the cause of the problematic situation, it is specific to the particular situation and is temporary i.e. will be over when managed and not permanent. For instance, my poor business results can be attributed like this: I did not work hard to sell my products, it is specifically to my business at this point of time and not that I always make losses. This kind of assigning of reason for poor results in business gives me power and hope to improve my business. On the other hand, say I blame myself like this: I 30

am a failure, I always make losses not only in business but everywhere and things will always be like this. Then I am disempowering myself by creating negative feelings of hopelessness that will make me more of a failure than a success. We must consciously make sure that our attribution of causes gives us the power to manage things, is specific to the particular instance and is of temporary nature only. This is optimistic attribution and is a way to empower oneself. This power one has can be used for both ones own development and for bringing about change in ones organisation, community and society. There are many well-known examples of this self-empowerment which people have used for themselves and their societies. Take for instance Gandhiji. When he came to India from South Africa, he had practically no influence on the Indian Freedom Movement. But look at the way he transformed the same movement and brought it to success. Take another example of the same era, Dr BR Ambedkar. He not only improved his life chances but also for his entire community and made such impact on the society that it is being felt even to this day. There are numerous examples in the business world. Dhiru Bhai Ambani of Reliance Industry is one of the most brilliant examples of self-empowerment. He has been able to build a multibillion-dollar empire in the span of one generation time. Same with Bill Gates, a first generation entrepreneur. There are many though not so illustrious examples in the form of first generation entrepreneurs who have made a mark in the society. Similarly we can quote the examples of 31

religious leaders who have created new religions but had very humble beginnings. Whether it is Christ or Mohammed or Guru Nanak or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or Ravi Das. I am quoting marvelous examples to drive home the point, however many such examples at smaller scale can amply demonstrate the freedom and power we have to make a difference to our lives and lives of others. Are we making the most of this power we have? Or, we are just wasting away this hidden treasure and living like a beggar who begged all his life without knowing the big treasure lying hidden under the earth where he used to beg. Here are some self-tests for oneself to know ones level of empowerment. Am I blaming others or taking responsibility for my situation? The answer to this question will reveal the extent to which I am using the power within me. Do I get angry with others often? Because anger implies that others are at fault. Am I making a difference in others and my own life? The greater the impact for the better the greater I am using my power. Am I taking responsibility for my bad moods? How often I am in bad moods? A self-empowered person is a cool, collected and well controlled man. His/her life is balanced and disciplined. Of-course he is not over disciplined, his life is like the well tightened string of the musical instrument which is taught enough to produce good music but loose enough to have flexibility. There are many such tests with which one can evaluate ones empowerment. Empowerment translates in practical terms into a life of fulfillment. In fact the central theme of human life from birth till death is empowerment. The little baby feels very powerless and makes effort to move in 32

the direction of powerfulness by learning the ways to manage living. Later as one grows, one makes greater efforts to acquire mastery in various fields. Successful people are powerful people. One can use ones creativity to empower in various ways. The power is already there in ones own self, waiting to be tapped. Just be alert towards it and tap it. In the chapters that follow I am taking different facets of our life with particular focus as to how can we bring about a change for the better in our lives by harnessing the powers that are already within us. Not only harnessing these powers but also how not to fritter away the same.

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CHAPTER 3

MANAGING SUCCESS GOALS


Once the goal is decided then put 100% in it for its realization. All of us want to be successful in life and enjoy the prestige and sense of satisfaction it brings with it. However, achievement of success goals generally entails effort, hard work and even tough struggles. Success goals are the ones that bring social glory to the person. Different persons cope with the stress of achievement of these goals given by our society in different ways. Accordingly, different persons adopt different attitudes towards these goals. There are two main dimensions of this issue. One, either to accept the goal or reject the goal. Even here, the acceptance or rejection of the goal can be either healthy or unhealthy depending on the consequences of the same for the society. Second dimension involves the means adopted to achieve these goals. They can either be ethical or unethical. In all there are following possibilities: 1. Acceptance of goal and ethical means to achieve the same; Unhealthy acceptance of goal and ethical means to achieve the same; Healthy acceptance of goal and ethical means to achieve the same; 2. Acceptance of goal and unethical means to achieve the same; 35

Unhealthy acceptance of goal and unethical means to achieve the same; Healthy acceptance of goal and unethcal means to achieve the same; 3. Healthy rejection of goal; 4. Unhealthy rejection of goal. There is a possibility that society may ignore the means adopted to achieve the goal depending on level of evolution of a particular society. The simplest of approach is that one accepts the goal as worthy and strives to achieve it by ethical or socially acceptable means. The degree to which one achieves it one considers oneself successful to that extent. In case of second approach, the person may socially hide the means or may be open about them. For example, earning money is a socially desirable goal. There are some, who accept this goal given by the society and achieve it. The means can be socially approved like through ethical business practices or through unethical means. Unethical can be theft/robbery or unethical business practices. The latter category of persons may also pose that they have acquired the wealth through right means to appear respectable in their social circle. Rejection of goals is also a very common phenomenon. The rejection may be by considerable thought out plan. Or one finds achievement of goals too stressful and is incapable to achieve the goal then grapes are sour variety of rejection may happen. Also, there can be rebellion against the norms of society and hence rejection of the goals given by society may result. For example, I may refuse to accept the money goal. For me, growing up as a better human may be more desirable goal than that. Or I may reject

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the money making goal saying it is a useless goal just because I may find it difficult to get it. Or I reject the goals given by this society which itself is deviant by my standards. Each approach has its pros and cons. The achievement of goals requires time, energy, resources, effort and also involves many obstacles and hence stress. Basically all the above ways of dealing with the goals reflect our coping style with the stress and effort involved in achievement of goals; whether we confront the problems or escape from them. Apparently the confronting approach to deal with goals seems to be to adopt the goals as worthy and to strive ethically to achieve them with all ones might. Rest all may involve some degree of escapism or defensiveness to deal with the attendant stress. I am not ruling out that sometimes society itself may be deviant and can give unhealthy goals that need to be rejected. Let us take some interesting real life examples. I will take my own experience first. The first serious goal that I remember having adopted was to stand first in the class. I used ethical means to achieve it and put in real hard work in class 10, 11 and 12. I achieved results too by always getting in merit list. Later, when I did not make it to the medical college I rebelled that I would not go to medical college now. There was stress of failure that I coped it by rejecting the goal as not worthy. I said I will get into civil services (IAS) which command better status and salary than the doctors without analyzing whether I was competent enough to get into it or not. I just imagined that I would make it because I was a brilliant student. Even though I was not being in touch with the reality of my life where the probability of my making it 37

was not high. However, it was a very comforting defense mechanism and I did not feel the pinch of not making it in the medical college and believed that I will make it in the IAS. Now let me examine my friend (name changed) Yogeshs role as a president of Rotary Club. The achievement goals of this role involve stress & effort. Therefore Yogesh is abandoning these goals. For him the main objective of becoming president was to embellish his CV, of being a Rotary President, not the achievement goals of this role. No doubt he shared that he feels bad when he finds other presidents achieving these goals and doing well. Basically, he wants to achieve these goals also and hence feels bad when he is not achieving the same. However,to deal with the stress of not achieving it he abandons these goals. It does give him a sense of failure even if he denies it. The way out of these dilemmas is that one should take up goals only when one is willing to put in 100%. Achievement entails stress and the way to manage it is to experience and confront the stress fully and use its energy to work towards achievement of goals and experience the joy of succeeding. Only then this stress will get converted into joy with achievements. The above lesson is easy to draw but difficult to implement because we are selfish creatures and we want to eat the cake and have it too. Implementation is the acid test. The dynamics involved in implementation will be covered in later chapter. In above stories, the goals are not achieved with unethical means; they are either abandoned or worked for. In the lives of thieves and unethical businessmen the means of achieving the goals are not so-

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cially desirable whereas the goals are so. The types who reject the goals behave in an entirely different way. One of my friends, Kartik (name changed) has rejected the goal of earning wealth and he laughs at those who are involved in its pursuit. For him the worthy goal is Divine Self Realization for which he is constantly working. He believes that he is well on his way to achieving it and that is quite a satisfying idea for him. But all the same his ridicule for those worldly people who pursue material goals reflects that somewhere in the subconscious he has only rebelled and not clearly dealt and rejected this goal of earning wealth. Rebellion against the socially desirable goals has its own dynamics of unhealthy attitude towards others. From above, one can conclude that one needs to be very clear on pursuing ones goals. Lesser the defensiveness in their pursuit the greater the satisfaction in ones life. If one is not sure of the desirability of goal then examine it and accept or reject based on merits of the goal at the beginning. Once the goal is accepted then put 100% in it for its realization. And leave the results in Gods hands. Then there will be no regret; the mind will be at rest! Incomplete effort results in what is called Ziegernak Effect- the discontentment at incompletion and restlessness to complete the unfinished agenda. There is another important phenomenon related to achievement of goals. We unconsciously set limitations on our achievements. Let us examine the same in greater detail.

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The Glass Boundaries We Set For Our Achievements


Look into your image in the water. Are you a lion or a sheep? Take this incident.A new driver came for a job with me. He could drive the small car well but had never driven the luxury car. He refused to take the test for driving because he believed that he could not drive the big car. He had set a limit to his skills, an imaginary limit, a glass ceiling about his ability to drive the car. Similarly I have set a limit to my earnings, I relax the moment I have achieved them. This glass ceiling prevents me from utilising my full earning potential. Not only earning but also professional heights that I can achieve remain far away from me because of unconscious belief that I am not yet capable of achieving the same. The beliefs that set the boundaries to our achievements operate beneath our full consciousness like that invisible glass ceiling- it is there yet hidden from our sight. A beautiful sufi story illustrates this well. Once a cub of a lion is separated from its mother and other lions. As luck would have it a herd of sheep while passing nearby includes it in its herd. Years pass and the cub picks up the culture of the sheep herd. It speaks like them, eats like them and plays like them. And of course it believes itself to be a sheep, though a little larger in size and shape. In fact it develops an inferiority complex that it is dissimilar from other sheep in some important respects. It has no way to know that it is far more physically and otherwise superior to sheep. One fine day another lion spots this herd and is surprised to see a lion with them. It was a lion but behav-

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ing like as if it was sheep. What has happened to this lion? Why is it moving with the sheep and behaving like a sheep? He roars aloud to attract attention of the sheep lion. The sheep lion becomes as afraid as the other sheep and starts running in the herd nervously. This makes the king lion suspicious. He runs and catches hold of the sheep lion. Look dear lion asks the king lion, why are you behaving like a sheep and moving with them? What do you mean? asks the sheep lion, I am a sheep and have grown up with them. The king lion understands the whole story. He takes the sheep lion to the bridge above the clean river of water. He says, Look into your image in the water. Are you a lion or a sheep? Poor chap, you are a lion like me and the king of this jungle. Realise your true self and cast aside your belief that you are a sheep. Awake arise and stop not till you truly become the king of the jungle. This realisation at the exhortation of the king lion changes his life forever. From a sheep he becomes the Lion King. It will be good if we become alert to the limitations we set for ourselves. The process of the same goes somewhat like this. First I become aware of the glass ceiling. From awareness I move to understand its operational dynamics. How I do not look at or refuse opportunities, become risk averse, loose my focus & energy. This sets the cycle of poor achievement in motion. For instance, I have a limitation set for myself that if I earn about 50000 rupees it is enough for me. This glass ceiling stops me from looking at opportunities where I can earn more for the same or even less amount of efforts. While if I extend my limit to rupees 500,000 41

per month, then I look for opportunities where I can earn that much and not waste my energies at low return on investment (ROI) activities. I awaken all my dormant energies towards achievement of this goal. Moreover, I see persons of my level of capabilities earning more which inspires me that I can do it too. This demonstration effect is very powerful phenomenon. Until the Mount Everest was scaled, it seemed impossible. Once, Tenzing and Hillary broke that achievement barrier, it has been scaled umpteen times under more stringent conditions and paths. Similarly, once the barrier of covering 100 meters sprint in 4 seconds was broken, the record has been set to new heights by many more people. Same is the case in other sports records. This desire to set new record gives one focus, discipline and energy and sets in motion the virtuous cycle of achievement. It prevents the waste of our energies in useless pursuits and harnesses all our energies towards the achievement of our sacred goal. We see only the goal and nothing else like the legendary Arjun seeing only the birds eye in the huge tree; that level of concentration comes from focus of our attention to the goal. A good golfer sees only the ball and the hole, nothing else seems to take his attention. In sum, break the glass ceiling of limitation on achievemnt, set the realistic goal, make it a sacred and all consuming passion, focus all attention and energy on its achievement. No power on earth can stop one from achieving it.

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CHAPTER 4

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT


Wherever we give our attention and energy we grow in that direction.

In the last chapter, I dwelt on the theme of achievement of goals. Here I am moving a step forward and going to highlight the importance of a goal, which according to me, can bring about radical transformations in our lives. And that goal is self-development. What is its significance in our work-a-day world life and what are the options before us to achieve that? There is an ancient Vedic prayer which invokes God to lead us from darkness to light, from death to immortality and from untruth to truth. I have not the slightest doubt that the greater my darkness about my own self, the greater is my sorrow. Or in other words, my joy in life increases in direct proportion to my understanding of life. I can not shape my life, if I do not know the working of my mind and behaviour. The more unconscious I am of my behaviour, the more I am under the influence of my destiny and forces that control my life. A simple example is if we did not know the causes of our diseases then most of us would have been suffering from these; only by understanding the causes and cures are we able to heal ourselves and even avoid them in the first place. The same is applicable in the case of our own psychology of the mind. The more we under45

stand the causes and cures of our sorrows and sufferings the more we will be free from them. For instance, I do not understand that I am getting angry at my wife on some pretext, whereas the real reason might be that I am at fault and she is being made a scapegoat by me. This spoils my relations with her and consequently the peace in the home is disturbed, affecting all the children as well. But if I am aware of the reality of my mistake and accept the same gracefully and deal with my frustration in a healthy way, then the bad consequences, which affect the whole family, can be avoided. Our society is littered with the corpses of failed lives, which amply demonstrates the importance and significance of this principle. What is the way out of ignorance? I am reminded of my own state a few years ago when I was clueless as to why I am unhappy and what is the way out. I can still recall that gloomy feeling of being lost and confused. When all the doors seem shut and one struggles and wishes to be out and be free and light. What I describe in next paragraphs is very sacred and important. If we can have the attitude of serious attention towards it, we will benefit more. The most important insight to grow in understanding is the principle that wherever we give our attention and energy we grow in that direction. If I devote my energies towards making myself healthy then I will become healthy; or if I devote my energies in making more money, I will make more money. Critical decision for all of us is where we devote our time, energy and resources. We all have same amount of time and energy as well. The difference is in where we decide to invest the same. The first step to become confident, energetic, and

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cheerful is to give ones attention and energies to developing ones personality. We must decide to devote some time everyday for our development; it can be as simple as reflecting on our behaviours or reading a good book on the subject, or discussion on our life issues with others. Or attending self-development programmes, writing personal journals, meditating and so on. Specifically even during busy day schedule let us take time off to reflect on what is happening to us and why, what is happening to others and why. It is a small investment with big returns. I would dwell further on some of these techniques and methodologies. 1.Meditation: Self-awareness can be increased drastically through regular practice of meditation. Meditation is an art of entering into heightened state of relaxed awareness. There is lot of confusion regarding what meditation is. To clarify, let me define first, what meditation is not. It is not concentration on any object, thought or idea. It is not recitation of mantra or Gods name; it is not focussing on breath. It is the knack of establishing oneself into ones pristine nature that is witnessing awareness that does not choose or judge. Absence of distracting thoughts and feelings enable one to enter into that state. Many researches have clearly demonstrated the benefits of meditations that are summarized here: It brings peace of mind, a feeling of being at peace with the world, and a sense of well being, It enhances ones creativity, and coping with stressful situations, 47

It brings clarity of understanding and a sense of confidence, There is some evidence that it is beneficial in reducing high blood pressure besides reducing the severity of migraine headaches. The best way to learn about it is to learn from experienced meditators who can guide one in avoiding various pitfalls in its practice. Let me share my experiences of meditation and its powerful impact on my life. Meditation has become a prime source of strength in my life. I do it daily and look forward to it everyday as the first activity in the morning for about 40 minutes to 120 minutes or sometimes even more. It brings tremendous feeling of calm, strength and clarity. It is the process of spiritual bath of ones consciousness and gives the similar feeling that one gets at physical level after a bath especially after a sweaty day. Much better feeling actually, one feels light, clear and at peace with oneself. This morning process is the sheet anchor of my life now. I know that every negativity will be washed away when I sit for meditation. This gives me great strength to bear the daily frustrations in life. It also daily brings back my focus in life, which is to spread this precious knowledge about spiritual aspects of life worldwide. I can say that I am able to pursue this aim in life despite many downs on the path because of these morning meditations, which rejuvenate me again and again to pursue this goal despite all the failures. I am not going to dwell on the mystic experiences during meditation, because they are of little significance in front of transformations in life that can be brought about by this daily practice of meditation.

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Meditation alone is not enough in the practical life. There are certain limitations.For greater understanding other means are also helpful. One such way is to write a personal journal. 2. Journal Writing: It is an important tool to get clarity about ourselves. In this journal we record our reflections, feelings and their causes, events and our observations on the same, our experiments with new behaviours, our impressions of different people we meet, important insights and thoughts, experiences with new ideas and things, dreams and fantasies and so on. Let me summarize some of the purposes served by writing of the journal: it brings clarity on various issues, it is a feedback system for oneself, it can help one to have catharsis of suppressed feelings, it records our personal growth journey, it helps us to build our personal concepts on various aspects of our life, It disciplines one to spend some time alone in reflections everyday. I can say that this book is the result of my journals where everyday I write for about half an hour to one hour. It is a great cathartic experience. Everyday, at the end of my journal writing, I feel light, energized and clear on various issues of concern. Most of the concepts that I am sharing in this book were the result of my reflections noted in the journal. Journal writing strengthens ones reflecting power but real implementation of change is the easiest in the case of modeling after some role model.

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3. Mentoring: One of the most important ways one learns in life is by modeling after some significant persons behaviour. Why is it so? As small kids all our learning was by and large through modeling after our parents and other significant members of our family. Most of us might have experienced how we just follow the boss if he has a strong personality. His subordinates ape his good and bad traits with equal zest. Let me share my own experience with one of the very tough bosses I had. Even though I disliked some of his behaviours like shouting at his subordinates, I still picked up this bad habit of his and had to work hard to get rid of it. Similarly I can recall some of the good habits I picked up from my father just effortlessly and unconsciously. My eldest brother was my role model during my school days and I used to deliberately ape his habits both good and bad like biting nails, shaking leg while lying down, reading while lying down and so on. My little three years old son just wants to do everything I do and emulates most of my behaviours, creating a delightful picture for all to watch. This has made me very careful about my habits and manners because if he picks up my habits and manners then the best way to teach him is to improve my habits and manners. This is the greatest lesson of parenting: If I want my child to have goodness then the best way to teach him is by self example. At that impressionable age, the child picks up very fast by modeling. Modeling behaviour is a complex phenomenon in itself having an elaborate theory of its own and that is beyond the scope of this book.

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One of the easiest way to acquire good habits is to have a mentor of high caliber. A good guide on the path to personal growth is a great blessing. I will talk more on this later. There are few more ways to facilitate personal growth and one that can be of moderate help is a personal growth-training programme. 4. Personal Growth Training Programmes: Modern self-development technology has come to a point where some good training programmes are available in the market. One of the primary benefits of these programmes is that it brings one in touch with people who are interested in this area of self-development and other aids for the same. These programmes are offered by both the spiritual and modern organizations using the best of both the state-of-art in psychology and eastern mysticism. These programmes have following expressed aims and objectives: Self-insight and acceptance of self; Better understanding of other persons and awareness of ones impact on them and vice versa; Broadening the perspective of life and bringing to awareness the spiritual dimension of life; Opportunity to experiment with new behaviours within the group and find out the impact it has on self and others; Better understanding of group processes and increased skill in achieving group effectiveness; Develop clarity in personal goal and plan to achieve them in a win-win manner within the organization; 51

Increased recognition of the characteristics of larger social systems; and Greater awareness of the dynamics of change. These trainings also use methodology which uses the here and now generated behavioural data to derive learning for the participants through experiencing, reflecting, conceptualizing, experimenting and re-experiencing cycle (explained in greater detail in chapter on Learning to Learn). In brief, participants learn by experiencing the events in the group and not by lecture mode. This is similar to teaching somebody about chocolate by making him or her taste it and not by lecturing about it. For instance, in spiritual training there are various exercises in groups that help people in catharsis of suppressed feelings, experiencing of love for the fellow participants, insight into ones pattern of behaviour and so on. Take as an example one exercise where participants share their life stories in great details. I have seen this process bringing people close together and helping in catharsis of suppressed feelings. Or for instance, in Achievement Motivation training, there are projective tests to bring out the motivational patterns. Certain games and exercises in the group make participants experience their goal setting or risk taking or leadership behaviours. In Transactional Analysis(TA) training basically Bernes school of TA is taught both conceptually and experientially. Personally I find it very useful and the insights are practically applicable in work-a-day world. This also provides a good framework of human personality and the one I have described in the chapter one is largely based on TA and Freuds structure of personal-

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ity. Similarly, in T-group training, eight to twelve participants come together in the group where facilitator is like any other member of the group and not a leader. There is no structure or agenda before the group and it becomes the task of the group to evolve its own structure and agenda and move the group forward. This process throws open the possibilities of different sets of behaviours by different members generating ample data about the members in the here and now for them to learn about each other and the group processes. The trainers role is to facilitate learning from the data being generated in the here and now in addition to creating learning opportunities during the process. The process of learning is experiencing the event, reflecting, conceptualizing, experimenting based on the new conceptualization and testing the impact of new behaviour. This cycle is repeated again and again for greater learning. Feedback process forms an important tool for members to learn from each other. 5. Openness to feedback: This brings us to another very important way in which we learn and grow. If we know how to take feedback, then the whole world of learning is open for us. Our everyday life is giving so much feedback that if we know this art of taking feedback then life becomes our greatest Guru. Our desire to protect our egos from the criticism of others is the biggest block in receiving feedback. There is natural instinct in us to protect ourselves the moment something is said against. If we can manage this instinctive protection and become open to whatever is being said and separate the wheat from the chaff, then 53

this process of receiving feedback does the same job that the fire does for the gold. It removes our impurities. What enables the person to take the feedback in the right spirit? High self-esteem, keenness to learn, grow, and understanding the importance of criticism are some factors that enable us to take the feedback. Of-course, the trust in the life processes and the climate of acceptance facilitates this process. There are few well-known tips on giving feedback too, that I am enumerating below: Consider others need for the feedback one wants to give; a real difficult job because we want to give feedback to satisfy our need most of the time; Neither evaluate nor judge nor interpret the behaviour, just describe it. It requires plenty of self-discipline; Better give feedback on behaviour that can be modified; Be very specific in describing behaviour; Give feedback only if it is desired or welcome; better wait for feedback to be solicited; Feedback is most effective if given immediately after the behaviour has occurred; Feelings during feedback should be direct and not otherwise; this is important. Well, giving and receiving feedback is also an art that can be perfected with practice. I am still struggling to learn this art. I know it is important to receive feedback well but my defenses come in my way. I have become aware but still lot remains to be achieved. One can visit training related sites on internet for

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more details about various trainings available throughout the world. I have given just one paragraph or two about a sample of them here but each school of training can be elaborated and expanded in number of books.Do not be misled into believing that it is insignificant based on the coverage I have given here. In todays world there are so many opportunities for us to grow and learn. We only need to focus our energies in this direction. I agree with Guru Nanak, the great religious reformer of Panjab, about his core value of life Man Jeete Jag Jeet (you win the world by winning the mind). The more I understand others and myself the more joy is there in my life. In fact my nature is pure joy and love, but due to my ignorance and lack of skills I am not able to enjoy it. It is my heritage.I need only to know how to access it. While in our practical day-to-day life, there is so much pain and suffering. In all my training programmes, emotional catharsis is one of the most significant features where people are able to relieve the burden of long suppressed and wrongly handled feelings. The reason is emotional problems are the most troublesome of all. Therefore in my next chapter I am going to focus on the various facets of our emotional wellbeing and maturity.

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CHAPTER 5

FEELINGS-THE MUSIC OF LIFE


No Emotions, No Life; Know Emotions, Know Life One dark area, where most of the problems a common person experiences, is in the realm of emotions. Emotions keep crisscrossing our life all the time, some times we are aware of them and at other times they are subconscious. Emotions are the primary media to experience life. It is the emotions that give meaning to life and charge us to experience life through its sad, glad, bad and mad moments. If there were no emotions, there would be no difference between man and machine. It is the emotions that give life the myriad colours we experience: the romance between lovers, the love and caring of parents for their children, our excitements of achievements, thrills of sports, the grief and sorrow at the loss of loved ones and so on. It wont be exaggeration if I capture the significance of emotions in the slogan, No Emotions, No Life; Know Emotions, Know Life. Richness of life is the richness of our emotional repertoire. However, different persons have wide range of sensitivity for the entire spectrum of emotions. That determines the difference in the quality of our lives. The more sensitive we are to our as well as others emotional experience the richer the quality of our lives. This sensi57

tivity is at both the ends of the continuum- the joyous and the painful. I often see our existence of life as a musical concert in which the musical notes are the variety of feelings that we generate daily. In this simile, we are the musicians, who generate these notes of feelings. The strings of this musical instruments are our attitudes, values and self image which generate feelings on coming in contact with outside events and our own inner thoughts and memories. Further, we need to continually excel in our ability to experience subtle feelings as well as our skill to generate the finest of feelings possible in human beings.That enriches our life. Spontaneous flow of feelings is equally important. Do we get stuck in the negative feelings? Do we experience, cope, recover and move on? How is our coping and recovery capacity from the negative feelings? What is the general climate and mood in our daily life? Remember, we are responsible for all the feelings we experience. Nobody else is responsible to produce any feelings in us. It is our attitudes, values, evaluations, self- image and other such elements that generate feelings. In short the power to generate the range of positive and negative feelings is in us and not in outsiders. If we are often in bad moods then we are responsible for it and only we have the power to be out of this habit by examining and modifying our own expectations, evaluations, attitudes, values and self-image responsible for these bad moods. Blaming others will make us blind to our own powers in handling and recovery from it. The punishment nature gives us for blaming others is that we keep

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suffering from our problems. The secret of enriching our life lies in giving attention, time and energy to enhancing our skills in emotional management. To understand the management of emotions let us take a look at the process of movement in feelings. My little two-year-old son is crying for games in the park. His feelings are of pain, intense longing to go out to the park and frustration at my not responding. His feelings generate in me feelings of irritation, my awareness of my compulsion to do other important work and consequently sense of frustration. When I express these feelings of irritation, disturbance and frustration to him, it in turn stimulates feelings of frustration, pain and crying in him. Which in turn stimulate remorse, pity and guilt in me. In order to assuage these feelings in me, I act to pacify him and accept his desire to take him out and ignore my important work that leads to a residual feeling of resentment against my son. This residual feeling will leak out in some form or the other like unreasonable anger or scapegoating of somebody etc. The critical aspect is that when all this is happening, am I aware or I just keep acting out from these feelings as if some machine reacts to the forces outside of it. The level of awareness of these phenomena increases the options available to me to act in various wayshealthy or unhealthy. The chances are that I am being controlled by outside events if I am not aware of what is happening to me because then I react to the outside stimuli. Luckily, we have the power of awareness with us which we can increase consciously by practice to be59

come more aware. The more aware I am of my feelings the more free I will become.Then I can exercise my choice of acting in a different way and not merely reacting to the others feelings in a knee-jerk reaction. Let me broaden the scope of this understanding with taking it further to the management of our stream of consciousness. Just like the constant flow of water in the river, there is this constant flow of thoughts and feelings in the human consciousness. This stream of consciousness is incessantly flowing for all of us, from the small child to the old person. There may be few small spells of thoughtlessness during the waking hours.But that is rare. Our sense of emotional well being depends on this stream of consciousness. The incessant flow of thoughts accompanied by related feelings. There is substratum to this stream like the riverbed to the river. What is this substratum? This is the Spiritual Self. This substratum consists of pure witnessing. Pure witnessing means just plain awareness without any evaluation or interpretation of flowing thoughts and feelings. Another characteristic of this witnessing awareness is that it is unchanging. Always the same. And exactly the same in all the living beings. It is beyond time and space dimensions. More significant than thoughts are the feelings; they touch us, for instance they make us cry, laugh and rejoice. Thoughts have their own importance in our lives; some ideas have changed our history. Thoughts also generate these feelings. There are a whole lot of feelings but they can broadly be classified into following four categories: Sad, Bad, Glad, and Mad.

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Each category has a wide range of emotions, which can vary in intensity from mild to intense. Feelings are generally indistinct, intermingled and constantly changing. Besides, there are layers of feelings hidden behind each other. Feelings may be happening below the level of awareness. One may not be in touch with them. Since feelings are so important for our wellbeing, I am listing here few significant tips to manage the same. A Few Practical Hints on Managing Emotions: Most common mistake we make while expressing negative feelings towards others is that it comes like an attack and blame on the other person. You make me miserable by your behaviour.You embarrassed me at the party.You lack social etiquette.You hurt me and so on. This puts the other person in a defensive or counter-offensive mode and the message never gets home. Instead, a fight ensues generating more intense negative feelings and blaming of each other. Another mistake in this style is that blaming the other for ones own negative feelings is a sure way to dis-empower oneself. On the other hand, if the statement is non-judgmental or non-evaluative it does not put the other person on the defensive. The statements made above can be re-framed in the light of above understanding like this: I feel miserable when you behave like that or I felt embarrassed by your that behaviour (no judgement for the behaviour) at the party; or I am uncomfortable with your social behaviour and etiquette or I am hurt by this behaviour of yours. This sets the ball rolling for further understanding of each others point of view. When we transact with others the stance 61

can be one of these: 1. At the same level i.e. one to one 2. Putting oneself on a higher pedestal 3. Putting the other person at a higher pedestal Ideal situation is when we can relate at the same level with all. It is easier said than done. However, it can be an important growth agenda. Feelings are generated by various attitudes, values etc. If we can examine our attitudes and values in the light of feelings they produce, it will help us to align the same in favour of producing finer quality feelings. Feelings and thoughts have a reciprocal relationship; each can produce the other. For instance, by memories of past pleasant and unpleasant events, by imagination and by stimulation of different senses like smell, taste, touch, voice and visual scenes and thoughts various feelings come alive. Awareness of these phenomena is helpful in managing feelings in a better way. How to change the unhealthy emotional conditioning is another very important consideration for personal growth. This is the toughest of all the tasks of personal growth. Deep level meditative experiences bring about tremendous change in attitudes. Similarly if one is relaxed and not stressed one tends to experience better feelings. Peak experiences have a deep impact on the conditioning of the feelings. Attention on the feelings in oneself also helps one to learn about various ways of learning the subtle causes and consequences of feelings. Practice being in the moment and experience the feelings one is experiencing. Also make an inventory of all the feelings one has

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experienced in the last one hour or half an hour or 15 minutes. There are various ways to stimulate good feelings like reading good books, music, discussing personal feeling details with others. Dancing and singing also elevates ones mood. So does singing bhajans (devotional songs) and meditation. Feelings have created another kind of social classes: emotionally rich and emotionally poor. I aim to be emotionally rich. The real poverty is the poverty of great feelings. Feelings are the most valuable currency in this world. The greatest asset is the skill in generating great feelings and greatest liability is the ineptitude that generates negative feelings. Let me just familiarize you with the scope of understanding that can be gained in this expertise on feelings. This covers the following: 1. intra-personal feelings, 2. interpersonal feelings, 3. intra-group and inter group feelings 4. Intensity of feelings 5. Feelings impact on others based on the sensitivity of the receiver and originator, 6. Residual feelings and their impact on relationships, 7. Chemistry of feelings in terms of how each persons feelings influences the other persons feelings. 8. The ebb and flow of feelings i.e. sensitivity to the movement of feelings, 9. The healing of painful or shocking feelings, 10. Time taken in healing of negative feelings, 63

11. Factors influencing healing of negative feelings 12. Impact left on the personality of the experiencer of strong negative and positive feelings, 13. What kind of feelings energize and deenergize, 14. Energizing and deenergising valence of feelings, 15. How thoughts influence feelings and vice versa- thought feelings interactions, 16. Self Image , values and attitudes role in generating feelings, 17. Means to improve the sensitivity towards feelings of self, others and group, 18. Ability to make interventions for willful generation of different kinds of feelings by various means like thoughts, reading, visuals, music, activity etc in self, others and group, 19. Level of awareness of feelings in self of primary, secondary and tertiary feelings, 20. Movement of feelings from primary to secondary to tertiary feelings, 21. Inventory of all the feelings possible in humans and their intensity range, 22. Common and rare feelings- precious, semiprecious and low value feelings, 23. Substratum of feelings- the I am consciousness, 24. Maturation of personality and feelings, 25. Management and coping with feelings, 26. Feelings and motivation, 27. Feelings while sleeping and its management, 28. Psychological Environment and its influ-

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ence on feelings creation, 29. Physiology of ebb and flow of feelings, 30. Generation of feelings by outside drugs and consequent dependence on drugs, 31. Depth of understanding of life and its influence on feelings such as an attitude of humility, 32. Power of physical presence in influencing feelings such as the physical proximity of the saint or a psychotic person, 33. Mystic experiences and accompanying feelings; inducing feelings by mystic touch, look or sound.

GETTING UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH A SELECT FEW FEELINGS Take a close-up view of couple of important feeling such as anger, stress and hostility.For understanding of stress, I am attaching an appendix because it deserves a separate section. Besides its flavour is different from the writeups here wherein different experts views have been given. This close-up view of anger and hostility will illustrate the complex dynamics of feelings.

ANGER, THE FIRE IN MAN


Angers mother is blame. Most of us experience anger, for some its episodes are few and far between while at the other extreme are those who are always angry. It affects our relationships with peers, family, friends and others. It affects our performance on the job and hence success. 65

The friendly counselor advises us ways to manage it by various means like count 10, focus on breath or imagine the consequences but it does not help because reason takes a back seat when anger is ruling over us. This seems to make the case of managing anger hopeless. However, there is a way to manage it. When we enter a dark room and do not know the way to switch the light on, we fumble and tumble on various objects scattered in the room despite taking the precautions. We walk slowly, lean on objects, move over hands to detect any object which may hurt us. However as soon as we lay our hands on the switch and put the light on we feel more confident and all the fear of hurting ourselves by hitting objects is gone. Similarly as long as we are ignorant of the dynamics of anger we will remain in perpetual fear of getting hurt and hurting others by this strong emotion. But when we understand the various forces influencing us to get angry, we are in full control and anger vanishes like the darkness of the room. In order to manage this emotion, the first requisite is that we are motivated enough to do so. Rest is easy. It does not require any will power to control it because managing does not mean suppressing it. It means letting it flow out quietly. The most important aspect we need to realize is that we give ourselves the permission to get angry to different intensities. We are responsible to manage it. No body can make me angry unless I permit myself to get angry. However, in practical life our belief is that people make us angry by doing whatever they do. This brings us to the important characteristic about this emotion, which is that angers mother is blame. Mostly anger is directed against others

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while it can also be towards oneself. When I am angry with someone or myself at that time basically I am blaming others/ myself for having done something against my expectations. Before blame arises there is this frustration of belied expectations or it may be some loss or some other primary emotion. In majority of the cases the anger is not the primary feeling; before anger arises there is some other feeling like loss, humiliation, frustration, hurt and so on. Another important characteristic of anger is that generally it is a secondary emotion preceded by undealt and subconsciously experienced primary feelings. Here comes the crucial factor that helps us to manage anger. There is some time gap and space between experiencing the primary feelings of hurt, frustration, humiliation etc and flipping to anger towards others or self. One flips from experiencing the pain of primary feelings in our Real Self to inflicting the pain on the person who generated these feelings in us by expressing anger from our Social Self. Actually, anger is an attempt to settle the score without dealing with the primary feelings. Deal with these primary feelings. This is the key to freedom from anger. How do we deal with these primary feelings? By experiencing them fully, attributing the responsibility for them and then taking remedial action. Let me illustrate it by my own experience. Yesterday a motorcyclist, who almost bumped into my car from behind, abused me for suddenly applying brakes to my car. There was, in split second, a surge of anger and violent feelings in me, but I remained in touch with my hurt at his abuse. The hurt feeling is primary while anger and vio67

lent feeling is secondary. I realized that abusing in return is the simplest reaction I can have but I will not do so. I also reasoned that anybody can insult or abuse me, it reflects his character or otherwise not my character. Why should I get hooked to somebody and react in anger in return? Better to examine my own mistake and work on that. That makes me free and in control. This processing of what was happening to me, was a way to handle the hurt. This illustrates that feelings like anger may arise spontaneously but it is possible to be free from their power on me to behave as per their dictates. They also mirror to me my self-image, values and attitudes. I feel good at having acted that way and it has enhanced my self-esteem. Whereas, the angry reaction would keep me in the old cycle of blaming and lower my self-esteem. Now examine the scenario when instead I would have got angry and violent with him. This would have led us to a street-fight, hurt and bleeding noses along with sense of failure and low self-esteem. This amply makes it clear that dealing with primary feelings and not flipping to anger is the way to manage anger. Angers intensity will be much lower once we have dealt with the primary emotion giving birth to anger. There are many other aspects of anger like when, how and how much to express on which I will not deal. That one learns with practice based on the consequences one experiences. In sum, anger can be managed by managing the primary feelings that give birth to anger. Secondly by taking responsibility and not blaming others. Thirdly, by being fully aware of what all is happening to us at each moment. It is very easy once we are aware of

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these dynamics. After calming the fire of anger, let me take another very significant feeling, hostility.

HOSTILITY- ITS IMPLICATIONS AND MANAGEMENT


Eliminate hostility from your consciousness before it eliminates you! Hostility is a common phenomenon seen more and less in all of us. It seems like learning of human race during the struggle for its survival where the fittest survive. In order to save oneself, one is hostile to all those who challenge ones survival whether at physical or psychological level. Let us examine this hostility phenomenon from close quarters. The process may proceed like this: I have desire for some object, say I want an order for business from some company. One of their purchase executives is creating obstacles in my obtaining that order. My instinctive reaction will be one of hostility towards him. First, there is a feeling of frustration in achieving my objective at the Real Self level and in split second, below my conscious awareness, I flip to my Social Self and from there I turn hostile and angry towards him. At the gut level, I want to eliminate him from the scene so that I can obtain my purchase order. He becomes the object of my hate and hostility. Few dimensions of this phenomenon can be taken for detailed analysis. First, I am blaming him and not taking responsibility. Second, I am imputing bad intentions to him despite the fact that I have generally no 69

way of knowing other persons intention. Third, I have not dealt with my feeling of frustration, which is a primary feeling. Fourth, despite the above drawbacks in myself, I am living in the illusion that the other person is at fault and should be taken to task. Further, when I express my hostility I get the reaction in return and this sets the cycle of war in motion. Once this begins then I have to bear the heavy toll in terms of spoilt relationships, stress and its harmful consequences. Most important dimension is that hostility can become a normal pattern with some of us and there is a good deal of research which shows that such people get heart attacks early in life. Even Life processes go against hostile persons and work to eliminate them. I tell myself, Pradeep eliminate hostility from your consciousness before it eliminates you! This understanding does help to reduce hostility to a considerable extent. I can say that from my experience. Selective hostility, where it is functional in helping one to survive like killing the other person in ones self defense or hitting the attacking dog to save oneself make sense. While, most of our instinctive hostile reactions are dysfunctional and positively harmful. This is an important lesson for us in emotional management; the cost of its ignorance can be like early death by heart attack or other diseases. In sum, the first factor towards emotional maturity is our focus on increasing the level of awareness of what all is happening to us from the subtlest to the grossest feelings & thoughts and bodily reactions (such as tightening/ loosening of muscles, heartbeat, pulse rate, hair standing on end etc). Second most important factor is taking responsibility for our feelings. Third factor is the

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sensitive processing and right cognitive appraisal of all that is happening inside and outside.

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CHAPTER 6

IMPLEMENTATION THE ELUSIVE FACTOR


Someone writes the advice, someone reads it out and someone hears it out, but noone actually practices it. Most of us generally know what is supposed to be done to bring about a desired change in our behaviour, attitude or value. Despite this knowledge we find ourselves not implementing the change. For instance almost all the fat people know what is required to reduce weight like more exercise, less fat and sugar in food and so on. Despite this how many are able to achieve weight reduction? They want to reduce but can not discipline themselves either for exercise or for not eating the fatty food. Somebody writes the advice, somebody reads it out and somebody hears it out, but nobody actually practices it. Important question is what are the dynamics involved in implementing change? Dynamics of change in our behaviour and personalities involves the dialectics of the three parts of our selves mentioned in chapter one namely: The Real Self, The Social Self and The Executive Self. Let me take the example of weight reduction process, once again. The desire to reduce weight can come from all or any of the three selves. The Real Self may want to look good and hence reduce weight. The Social Self may desire to reduce weight because it is its 73

value that people should not be overweight. The Executive Self may want to reduce weight because ideal body weight is required to keep oneself physically fit; obesity may cause diseases. The reasons for desiring weight reduction may be numerous, in addition to being of varying intensity. Let us now examine the dynamics. After I have resolved in my Executive Self to bring the weight down from 78 KGs to 70Kgs, I have started going for 45 minutes walk daily, instead of fatty oil in my food I am using fat free oil. I am also not bringing sweets from the market so that if there are no sweets at home there is going to be no temptation to eat the same. Some results are visible in the first week, a slight loosening of clothes but not much loss of weight. Then we visit our relatives marriage party and all kinds of mouth watering oily snacks, beverages and sweets full of calories are being served. My Real Self is tempted and wants to consume the sweets & snacks and beverages that I have denied to myself for long. My Executive Self decides to give leave from dieting for today only, because it is party time. I end up consuming calories that undo all the dieting labour for the last week. After the party, my Social Self starts self-flogging. Why did I consume so many calories? Why I did not stop myself from eating that much? Ok, now let me do longer exercise in the morning and compensate for this intake. The next morning I get up late as we had come late from the party so no exercise in the morning; another lapse in my resolve to reduce weight. I do not lose enthusiasm and am back to my exercise routine and low calorie diet. In the evening we go out to the market and my son wants to eat the ice-cream

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which I also like very much but each cup of ice-cream is about 500 calories. My wife and son eat ice-cream and I look at them while my firm resolve about dieting becomes soft like melted ice-cream. I can take one bite from my son decides my Executive Self. I take one bite, then second big bite and then third biggest bite, adding about 250 calories, the same amount of calories I consume during morning walk. And the story goes on with each day my resolve to reduce weight being weighed down by my temptations to eat high calorie sweets. My weight is back to 78 KGs. My Social Self is creating guilt feelings in me for failing to achieve the goal of weight reduction. Hopefully, the second cycle like above will start soon to reduce weight. Implementation is the issue! If we examine all the dimensions of implementation process then following insights emerge: 1. It requires focussed effort and constant re-energising of self to work on the issue. That is, undivided attention to one issue at a time; 2. If all the three selves namely Real, Social and Executive are aligned, then the task is easily achieved otherwise good amount of energy is frittered away in conflicts between these selves. This awareness of conflicts and the process of waste of energy further requires work at micro level of each self i.e. strengthening of weak self or controlling of strong self. What I mean is that if my Real Self wants ice cream and is strong enough to bulldoze the control of Executive and Social Self then we need to strengthen the Executive Self. This will keep in check the force of Real Self, which usually manages to have 75

its way and gets the ice cream. In simple terms, greater will power. However, this term will power is not the exact expression because it implies unconscious force of suppression, which is not what I am suggesting above. 3. Most important is to make the Real Self intensely want the loss of weight. For instance if I am in love with a girl and I want to impress her with my physical figure then the task will be far more easier because the motivation will rise; the Real Self will intensely want it. Or if I suffer heart attack and it is medically required to save my life then out of this fear of impending death, perhaps my Real Self may intensely want to reduce it. In this case, the force of Social and Executive Selves will rise tremendously and they will be able to control the Real Self in eating high calorie but tasty dishes. Ultimately, the balance of forces in these selves has to be in favour of enabling me to take exercise and avoid high calorie intake. The real task is how to bring about this favourable balance by increasing and decreasing the forces of these selves. Which happens either by falling in love or by getting heart attack or by attending high cost weight reduction prgrammes or by continually energising oneself by motivational talks or by reprimands of significant others to reduce weight or by loved ones inspiration or some other means. 4. Sustenance of high motivation to pursue till the goal is achieved i.e. the Real Self continues to intensely want this weight reduction, the Executive and Social Selves continue to exercise the rightful control on the Real selfs impulses to eat high calorie

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food. This happens by spending time and energy on reinvigorating like spending money on joining a programme of weight reduction. How it works psychologically is that, one, I have spent money so there is desire to get return on investment. Second, I regularly go to attend the instruction and exercise regime i.e. spend focussed energy on it. Third, my Social Self gets hooked in it by involvement of prestige like what will others say of me or I may want to impress others by outshining in the programme group where all the people are working to reduce the weight. This element of competition in the group also helps in energising my selves especially the Real and Social. Let me examine another illustration, which is subtle and more difficult, the attitudinal change. For instance, working on the issue of sense of low self worth that continually makes one aggressively compete or feel not OK about oneself or makes one seek encouragement from others. This issue of my sense of inferiority can be examined at micro level by first, seeing that it is my Real Self, which is feeling worthless. Second, it is not somebody from outside who is telling me that I am inferior but my own evaluation by my own Social Self is judging me such. This insight is crucial. There is ray of hope here because it is my own Social Self and no body else from outside; and I can change my own Self. It is difficult to change others but one can work towards changing oneself. Most important, why does my own Social Self judges me inferior? I was born a little child helpless and innocent, dependent for my life in this New World on 77

elders. Even when I grew up to be a toddler, still the elders had all the skills, while I could do little. I had to request or beg others for getting even small things done like opening the door or eating food with spoon and so on. All this makes me form an inference about myself that I am not OK or in other words inferior. This becomes the impression on my Social Self and continues to remain with me and motivate me to acquire more and more competence where sometimes I succeed sometimes I fail. The failures and comparisons with competent others strengthen this sense of inferiority further while successes eliminate it to little extent. My growth as a person is definitely facilitated by my desire to move out of this sense of inferiority. But because this sense is with me since my infancy it is quite deep rooted and requires extensive examination and work to be fully free from it. Executive Self can play a crucial role here to deal with this sense of inferiority by examining the objective reality where it is impossible to be competent in all the fields for any human being. For instance, I can be competent in behavioural science, business and some more fields but I am incompetent in music, medicine, flying and million other fields. There is one more dimension to this issue.This sense of inferiority is more when I am incompetent in the areas I value rather than those fields where I am not much concerned. Two actions can be planned to deal with this sense of inferiority. One, to define few select areas where one would focus on acquiring competence and second, to have realistic expectations from ones Social Self i.e. reprogramme ones Social Self to not have unrealistic judging standards and thereby not create feelings of infe-

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riority in the Real Self. Mostly the task consists of reprogramming ones Social Self because there is lot of contamination in it. This will have some benefits, one, freedom from feelings of inferiority in the Instinctive Self, second, sense of empowerment in Social self. Third, it will enhance ones emotional wellbeing in general.Lastly, one will stop being critical and judgmental of others thereby improving relationships at interpersonal level. It would be nave to expect that it is easy to reprogramme the Social Self. Reprogramming can vary in difficulty depending upon the multiple factors. Simple reprogramming is possible by one-self but complex and difficult reprogramming may require professional help or friendly counselling from some significant other. Personal Growth training programmes can prove helpful in this process. This reprogramming of Social Self is a specialised subject in itself and is beyond the scope of this book. However, I would give here briefly the philosophy of reprogramming. We are born as little infants, three kilograms in weight, with no knowledge of how to live our life in the new world where we have taken birth. It is an alien world where only skill of survival we have is our ability to suck mothers nipples and crying to call attention to our discomforts. From this extreme dependence on alien persons in alien world to our state of relative independence and interdependence on our own persons in our own world is a long and usually eventful journey. During our infancy, childhood, and adolescence this extreme dependence on significant others has many serious consequences for the rest of our entire life. It puts the infant in the life position that he is not 79

competent to deal with the world while others who look after him are competent to do so. This is a kind of feeling of being not OK vis-a-vis other elders around him. His all the motivation is by and large governed by need to master the skills of living and curiosity so that he can be as competent as the significant others (SO) in his life. Mostly children exhibit this behaviour by putting on parents shoes, acting out like parents and imagining stories where they are competent and masters of this world, besides wanting to do things like eating food, wearing clothes themselves even when they are quite awkward and incapable in doing so. One important observation one can notice while parenting children is that if we forbid them to do some activity like putting their finger in the electrical socket, they feel inhibited to act this out. But if they want to carry it out, they will seek permission from the parents by crying or will rebel against their injunction and do it. There are few significant happenings here. One, once the child is forbidden by significant others (SOs) to do the act he feels inhibited to carry it out. Two, if he wants to carry out, he will either seek permission or if not granted permission he will have to go into rebel mode to do it.Deep inside he is not free to act it out. These are two important concepts of PERMISSION and INJUNCTION. Either the child has the permission to act out certain acts or he is having the injunction. Acts here include activities, thoughts, and spoken word. This permission and injunction is given by the significant others on whom the child is physically and psychologically dependent. Acts, for which the child has the permission, he feels comfortable and energetic in carrying them out. While for those acts for which he has injunction he feels resis-

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tance and inhibition in carrying them out. This was so far as small acts were concerned for children. These permissions and injunctions do not end in childhood; instead they stay with us, without our really knowing them in our conscious awareness, throughout our life. Unless we make a conscious effort to get in touch with them we hardly are aware of their existence.Nevertheless they continue to influence our actions and life. These permissions and injunctions given to us by our SOs are not always healthy or good for us. Some of them can be positively harmful for our wellbeing, while needless to add others can be positively helpful. SOs themselves do not know what they are doing to the children because they also act out the permissions and injunctions given to them by their SOs. Let me list out the significant healthy permissions one can have from ones SOs: 1. You can Succeed 2. You can be Healthy, Well and Sane 3. You are Important 4. You can Grow 5. You are OK to be the sex you are or You can be You 6. You can Exist or Be 7. You can be a Child or You can have Fun 8. You can be your age 9. You can Belong 10. You can be Close 11. You can Feel Your Feelings 12. You can Think 13. You can be Holy 14. You can Change The World For The Better 81

Robert and Mary Goulding of Transactional Analysis School of thought have identified most of the injunctions for which above permissions are given. The last two permissions have been based on Pearl Dregos work. Besides permissions and injunctions, the other important influences from SOs are the drivers or compulsive kind of behaviours like being perfect, trying harder, pleasing others, becoming extra strong, hurrying up and being extra careful etc. A person does so because he has been programmed in his social self to act that way by the socializing process of his SOs. Special help from experts can neutralize these influences. This continues to silently influence our lives in terms of success we achieve, our health, our sense of well being and our moods without our being aware of their influence on us. Discovering these healthy and unhealthy permissions and injunctions and working out the unhealthy ones forms an important part of personal growth. Above is one of the several types of the reprogramming required in our Social Self. And this reprogramming is most effective when done with the help of SO. This is where the role of mentor or guru can be important. We will take it up in the relevant chapter later. Further, related to implementation is the factor of distractions.We often lose track of our goals because focus is lost. Let us give our attention to this dimension of implementing change.

FROM DISTRACTIONS TO FOCUS


Focus is achieved when one is emotionally bonded to the goal. For common people like us thoughts and feel-

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ings always occupy our mind. This incessant flow of thoughts and feelings follow the random pattern where our likes and dislikes dictate the flow to some extent. Both strong likes and dislikes energize the flow of thoughts regarding particular event, idea or person. We develop so many likes and dislikes during our interactions in the work-a-day world, mostly below the level of awareness or unconsciously. These then dictate our thoughts and feelings. This also forms the background for our loosing our focus. This random flow makes us direct our attention and energy to innumerable desires due to our likes and dislikes. If we are not clear about our goal whether it is of career, family, sports or academic then these desires surreptitiously distract us away from our goal. We get hooked to new desires that demand our time and energy and resources. This time, energy and resources are subtracted from our main goals resources making us loose our goal. This may seem simple but it is the most common reason of our not succeeding in our ventures.You very well know, when the suns rays are focussed they burn the paper. But the same rays without lens do not have the power to generate enough heat. There is an interesting story in Indian Mythology to illustrate the power of distractions in our life. One day the great sage Narada came to Sri Krishna and said,What actually is this maaya ( Divine Play of This World) of yours?. Maaya? replied Sri Krishna. Alright, come for a walk with me. They trudged along for some time when a village came into sight. Sri Krishna said, I am feeling very thirsty. Will you please get me a glass of water? Narada went to the village while Sri Krishna waited for him. 83

Narada entered a house and the housewife sent her beautiful young daughter to fetch water. When she returned with it, the woman said to the stranger, Why dont you marry her? She will make you a good wife! Narada thought, She really is beautiful! And he agreed. They had a son and daughter and lived in great happiness for several years, until one day torrential rain caused a flood. Water penetrated into the house. Narada piled up the furniture and put his family on top of it. But it was of no avail, the water kept on rising and the house became submerged. They all went on the roof, but the water rose higher and higher. Finally, Narada had to guard his whole family and kept them afloat. The situation was precarious. First his mother-in-law lost strength and got drowned. Narada consoled himself, Well, she was old, and might have died anyhow. Next his little daughter was taken away by the turbulent waters. My son is still alive! Narada thought. However, soon the boy also let go of his grip and disappeared into the rushing stream. As long as I have the wife I may have other children, reflected Narada, trying to keep up his spirits. But his wife was unable to hold out much longer and after some time she also shared the fate of others. Narada was getting quite desperate and exhausted. Gasping for breath and about to give up the ghost, he found himself standing near Sri Krishna. What is the matter with you? questioned Sri Krishna, and where is my glass of water? Narada, who had by now good experiential understanding of Maaya, replied, Now I know what is your maaya! The above story conveys our distractability so well besides telling us what is the meaning of experiential learning. When do we not get distracted

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from our main goal? Naturally when we really want to achieve our goal i.e. are emotionally bonded to our goal. Commonly it is said that when there is question of do or die then results achieved are much bigger than possible in ordinary circumstances. That is, when our desire to achieve the goal has the same intensity as that of a drowning mans desire to come out of the water to save his life. At that moment nothing has the power to distract us from our goal. That is what they call the killers instinct- at that moment of achievement I am so focussed on the goal that nothing else matters. In our traditions there is another story of Guru Dronacharya and his disciples. The guru was their teacher in archery. A bird was sitting on the Peepul tree and the guru asks his disciples what are they seeing. One disciple says he is seeing the tree, the bird, the leaves and so on. Another says that he is seeing the bird. When Arjuna, the most talented student, is asked what he is seeing. He says that he is seeing the birds eye only. That is focus on the goal when we see nothing besides the goal. It often happens in the game of ace golfers. They are so focussed on the ball and its path to the hole that they practically do not know what all is happening around them. Is that the power of concentration? Well concentration means that we are not distracted from where our attention is. Concentration results when there are no distractions. No distractions, know concentration. For instance, ace sports persons are really disciplined and focussed persons. Focus demands discipline. Discipline also in a way means that we avoid getting distracted by our likes and dislikes and remain focussed. If I want to reduce my weight I have to 85

discipline myself and exercise regularly even if I do not want to do that. Also discipline myself not to eat delicious dishes. Let me analyze my goal of writing this book. This goal relates to my professional achievement and I am really serious about making a mark in my profession. Achieving professional success relates to my whole self-esteem and self-image. Since this project relates to achieving this goal, I am really emotionally bonded with this goal. The results are visible on this as every day I am writing two or three pages on some important theme and feel satisfied at having written that. This is one of the strong positive payoffs of writing everyday. Some progress each day and accompanying emotional satisfaction augurs well for this book project. When some people recover from some emotionally traumatic experience it changes their life forever. Recently I heard a Rotarian who once went blind because of cornea defect and he could not see for some time. Then the medical discovery of cornea implant operation of half an hour restored his sight. That was the most emotionally exhilarating experience for him. From that time onwards the mission of his life is to install these cornea transplant facilities all over the developing world by raising funds from all sources so that blindness due to cornea defect can be cured for millions of people around the world. The energy and enthusiasm with which he pursues this goal is infectious. That is the power of emotional bonding with the goal. All difficulties can be surmounted in the path to achieve the goal if one gets the energy from these emotions which bond us to the goal. The best indicator whether the goal will be

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achieved or not can be sensed from the level of attachment and emotional bonding for the goal. It keeps us focussed to the goal leading to its achievement. Above examples well illustrate that focus is important for achieving goals.Focus is achieved when one is emotionally bonded to the goal. The strong like for the goal wards off the low intensity likes and dislikes of other desires that generally distract one away from ones goal. Another important aspect of implementation is that we lose touch with the ground realities of our life. What we conceptualise about the life processes and how the life in reality happens may not match. Let us examine this aspect in detail.

STAYING IN TOUCH WITH GROUND REALITIES


Sir, if you do not know how to swim then your whole life is gone now. Most of our failures, whether in business, work or relationships, can be traced to our loosing touch with the ground realities of life. Ground reality is the actual life phenomenon and our concepts about it or our understanding about the ways it works. It can be of as simple a phenomenon as the process of depositing telephone bill. Assuming, I have this concept that bill can be deposited in cash in particular telephone exchange. With this understanding of the reality, I go to deposit the same. When I reach the counter clerk after waiting in queue for about half an hour, I discover that it can be deposited by 87

cheque and not cash. Because the bill is of amount greater than Rs2000. Besides it has to be deposited before 12PM only by crossed local cheque favouring so and so. My understanding of the ground reality about bill depositing process was incomplete. Hence I failed to deposit the same despite going through various inconveniences. Take another example. A newly appointed Training Programmes manager in a Training Organisation, Rony, announces an event of programmes designed for Social Sector along with the regular programmes. He works hard to design and organise the new social sector programmes, prints the brochures and mails these to his regular business clients along with some social organisations. All the work for organising is done with due diligence. But the result is, the Organisation gets not a single nomination for all the social sector programmes. Only three or four enquiries are generated, that is all that results from his work. This failure can be clearly attributed to his being out of touch with the ground reality of the process of marketing and sales of such programmes. Neither product, nor price nor promotion was as per the requirements of the ground reality. There are more serious examples where persons careers are destroyed due to wrong understanding of the way the life works. Majority of the businesses started by new entrepreneurs fail due to precisely this reason. A seasoned entrepreneur is one who is very much in touch with the ground reality of business environment. No wonder that most of the businessmen are termed hard nosed practical persons who are not easily fooled. Similarly there is ground reality about our own selves. What we think of ourselves and what we actually are and what we ideally want to be. Life will be full of

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difficulties if our reality and our self-image are very different. I may think I am a very understanding father, while my son wants to run away from home as he is fed up with my criticisms. Or I may think I am a very good person while my wife has filed for divorce because of my cruelties. And then ask why they are behaving like that when I am such a nice person? Why it is happening to me? In terms of our different selves, the main work of staying in touch with the reality is that of our Executive Self. We continually need to strengthen this part of ourselves for which we need to practice regular reality check. The best way to strengthen it is to frequently make use of this self. I will now explain some ways by which distortions of reality about our own selves happen. The origin of this distortion lies in our childhood when we viewed the reality from our childlike perspective where our parents are the ideals. We ape their values and attitudes. We perform acts for which we get their affection and desist from doing acts for which we get their reprimand. And these impressions can at times get very deep rooted that they continue with us for our lifetime creating problems or satisfactions all through our lives. For example, if I am valued and loved as a child by my parents then I will have high self worth despite all the ups and downs in life. Or, if not loved and valued then low self worth despite all the highs in life, unless I work on this issue. Similarly, the process of denial of my real needs and feelings may occur. For instance, some parents feel very uncomfortable when their children cry and in order to deal with their discomfort they tell their children that crying is bad, why are they crying or may even order 89

them not to cry or drop a single tear. This may result in such children denying their feelings of pain. Even when they want to cry they will not cry. Others can detect that they want to cry but they will be out of touch with this feeling of theirs. Most of the men have difficulty in expressing their feelings of pain by crying because as little kids they learnt that brave boys do not cry. Most of us carry these childhood patterns well into our adult life forgetting that the ground reality is changed now. We can alter our ways of relating to a more functional modes. My mother now 70 years of age, still at times behaves like a little daughter in front of her 90 years old mother (it is really interesting to see this happen). Another very startling incidence of this kind of behaviour happened in one of my training programmes. A participant shared that he ignored the presence of us trainers in the group. Later we discovered that he had similar relationship with his father with whom he had related for about 48 hours only out of the last 30 years despite living in the same authoritarian household. He was still relating with us, the authority figures, from his childhood pattern. Most of the people continue to be dependent in their relationships with authority figures similar to their relationships with their parents in their childhood. In terms of our different selves, our stance of relating with authority figures remains that from our Instinctive Self instead of from Executive Self. This is due to emotional conditioning, which can be undone with little help from experts, or with practice and awareness. The present day reality is, I have grown up as an adult and can relate from the same level with authority figures, so let me be rooted in this reality and behave

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accordingly. I am reminded of an interesting story in this context. Once a School Teacher who teaches grammar in a village school boards a boat to cross the river during a rainy season when the river is flowing full stream. When the boat leaves the bank, the teacher initiates a conversation with the boatman. He asks him about his background and also as a grammar teacher he asks him, Do you know what is a grammar? The poor boatman replies in his innocence, What is grammar sir? You do not know what is grammar? Your half life is gone if you do not know what is grammar, o stupid fellow! The boatman feels really bad at this reprimand. After a while the storm starts blowing and the boat begins to rock dangerously. The boatman asks his arrogant customer, Sir do you know how to swim? The fearful teacher replies, No, please help me! The poor boatman replies back, Sir, now if you do not know how to swim then your whole life is gone now. Saying this he jumps from the capsizing boat. Alas! There is gap in the ground reality of life saving skill of swimming across the river and the theoretical understanding of grammar. In sum, from the above depiction of implementation of behaviour change dynamics, it is clear that why despite apparently knowing what is required to bring about changes in us we do not change our behaviours in some cases. What I have shared above is not the whole picture; there may be many more known and unknown dimensions in this process of implementation of change in our lives. Despite all this, change for the better is possible, it may need harder work or understanding or skill. No wonder, free advises, for personality change, available in plenty do not work! What works is our learning capacity. So let us move on to enhancing our skill of 91

learning in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 7

LEARNING TO LEARN
Just as the water has the tendency to fill potholes up to its own normal level, similarly, the lifes wisdom fills up the humble man to its own level of sagacity and peace. Why is it that some people learn more from life experiences than others? Reason is very simple: they learn to learn and therefore learn fast. Ability to draw learning for future use from ones experiencing is an important and perhaps rare skill. Why I am saying rare is because life is full of people who keep committing the same mistakes again and again in a cyclic fashion. I was also in this category not very long ago till I discovered the value of being a good learner. I am excited to share this insight because it is not very difficult skill but its value addition in life is remarkable. I will illustrate the learning cycle followed by some attitudes that facilitate learning. Let me share the model for learning. It is a helical process in which first one experiences the event followed by reflections on this experience. Based on this reflections one forms the concepts that put the learning in a framework of ones understanding of the situation. Concept here means forming a principle that can be applied later in similar situations. The last step is to experiment or make interventions or act based on this conceptual framework to test the efficacy of ones understanding and principles that one has formulated. The results of this experimentation further help one to experience the new event starting another cycle. If the principle 94

applied worked as expected then one has a good learning otherwise one revises the concept and again repeat the cycle. Let me illustrate the above model by my real life experience. For instance, as President of Rotary Club I was to vote in an election for the post of RI Director. Two senior club members told me to vote for one particular person whom I did not consider to be fit for that post. I very bluntly told them that I do not consider the candidate good enough and will not vote until they convince me that he has performed in the past and achieved results. My blunt reply annoyed them and they started creating problems for me during the meetings in the form criticisms and non-cooperation. This is the experiencing part of the learning cycle. The experience made me realize (the reflecting part of the cycle) that tact works better in such situations with such persons and there was no need for me to be straightforward with them. This principle that tact works better with them (this is the concept/principle formation part), when I applied again (This is the experimentation part of the cycle) helped me to carry them along in decisions which were as per my wishes (this proved the efficacy of my learning in the new cycle). The new experimentation with tact proved that tact works with people in some situations better than straightforwardness. This framework of learning, originally given by David Kolb, has proved to be of value to me to learn more from the situations. The critical elements are that one experiences the situation with the complete openness. Experiencing means being aware of all that is happening to one during the experience including thoughts, feelings, sensations in the body and environment stimuli. 95

Reflecting requires that one is free from biases induced by feelings and is objective enough in ones perceptions. Conceptualizing, that is drawing the inferences, concepts and principles from ones reflections, is ones skill that can be honed with practice. Even a small infant starts conceptualizing about the way the world operates. Experimenting requires risk taking ability and trust in ones abilities and strong self esteem to be able to face failures also. No risk taking, no experimenting means no learning. Calculated Risk taking is enhanced if one has come to trust life. It means one has faith in the life that it will protect one from extreme dangers. When I say risk taking I mean calculated risk taking and not gambling. That was about the learning cycle. Now let us examine the attitudes that promote learning. Attitude is once stance towards people, objects, events, situations etc. It has three main components: one, evaluation, second, feelings and lastly the beliefs towards the object of ones attitude. The foremost attitude, which promotes learning, is humility. This attitude indicates the evaluation that one does not know all and can learn from others. The feeling is of oneness and equality. Whereas the belief is that one can always learn from humblest of the humble and every situation. Humility does not come easily because we have seldom worked on our own sense of inferiority that causes us to take the superior and arrogant attitude. It is a sadhana, a rigour, in itself to work on this aspect of ones personality. Once,I was upset at having been angry with some authority figure; I had been quite arrogant in my attitude towards him. When I reflected on my arrogance and 96

anger later, I found that my arrogance was born out of my ignorance of my ground reality. At the ground level I was an ordinary person who was imagining myself to be extraordinary. The moment this realisation of my ground reality dawned on me and I accepted my ordinariness, I was at peace and my attitude towards him changed from anger with blame to empathy with his situation. My ground reality is that I can die of any disease any time. I may go bankrupt, suffer humiliation, and accident and some such calamity can fall on me any time. Further, I know very little of life, even of my professional field. My life hangs on a flimsy thread that can snap any moment. My ignorance clouds me often and I become quite arrogant. It seems like an old habit, reflecting an inadequate resolution of my self worth issue. However, this sudden transformation from guilt at anger to peace and compassion has strengthened my faith in this great power of humility. Humble means lying low and just as the water has the tendency to fill potholes up to its own normal level, similarly, the lifes wisdom fills up the humble man to its own level of sagacity and peace. Some wise man once shared that when the storm comes, it blows away the tall and stiff trees but it can do no harm to the humble grass and low & flexible plants. They survive the storm by being low and bending to its wishes. Which has more strength, the tall and stiff tree or the humble grass? The humility of the grass is its strength in this case. I have seen in my personal life experiences that when I accept my smallness, I do not provoke the attacking tendencies in others. While, when I act aggressive and make tall claims people are provoked to attack and show me down. 97

There are other benefits too. One learns from all and learns more. People have a tendency to love and like humble person; so they get more love and have better interpersonal relationships. Humility makes one experience positive feelings like I mentioned above. Humility also makes a person flexible; there is no stiffness or special demands for ones usual standards of comfort and facilities when they are not available. Humility makes ones life simple and hence easy. One is able to identify with others easily and this increases ones capacity for love for others. In a weighing scale it is the heavier side that sits low. Humble persons are the heavier persons! Coming back to learning aids, the motivation to learn and grow enables one to seek out opportunities for learning. If I realize the importance of personal growth then naturally I will devote my energies towards it. From above it is clear that to become a good learner is both a science and an art. Something that is not very difficult to learn but which gives rich dividends in life in terms of happiness and prosperity. Related to learning to learn is our skill in using the wisdom of our body that keeps sending messages to us for our well being all the time. Let us look into this wisdom available to us for our well being.

ART OF LISTENING TO THE WISDOM OF THE BODY


When we use the bodys wisdom our life choices are likely to be much better than mere cognitive reasoning.

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Our whole system responds to the various stimuli being received by it from the environment. However we give attention to only the grossest reactions from the system like pain in the body or some psychologically strong reaction like anger etc. Majority of the signals are not noticed at all. If we develop our sensitivity in listening to our whole system of body-mind complex our response and choices will improve. Let me cite one interesting incident. I was in the midst of a confusion of lost file of my property papers and anxious to locate it. I needed an important paper to be handed over to some visitor who was waiting for it. Not only was I not finding the file, I was also anxious that I may not have lost it. During this confusion and anxiety, the doorbell rang and a kind of fear was experienced by me that there is a bad news. I went out and postman wanted to hand over a registered letter. I do not know why I sensed that it was a legal notice even though I was not expecting any such notice. I asked him was it a legal notice. He informed that no such thing is mentioned on the letter. I immediately opened the letter and to my surprise I found a legal notice for me. My whole system had sensed it right. There are so many such instances especially when we meet different persons. Our system senses much more than all the five senses put together. The need is to develop this capacity in us to sense our system for all the signals that it keeps conveying to us. This sensitivity is enhanced when there is low level of noise in our system- the noise of random thoughts and feelings and desires. The quieter the whole system, the better one is in sensing the signals of the system. Besides, if one keeps ones attention on 99

the various signals being generated one can develop this sensitivity by practice too. The reason for this capacity in each one of us is not far to seek. As little children we used to sense our environment without the knowledge of language and at that time our sensing was more from all the cues given by the stimuli and not merely by words. We also have inherent ability to sense emotions in others from various cues for each emotions. These emotional cues from others generate in us some corresponding feelings and cognitive signals from which we empathize about others feelings. Developing and exploiting this wisdom of the body can enhance our life chances many times. Our life depends on the choices we make every moment of our life. Most of the choices are made based on inadequate information. When we use the bodys wisdom our choices are likely to be much better than mere cognitive reasoning. I use it as an additional input and do not replace the cognitive rational element in making various choices. With practice one can become an expert in this art of using bodys wisdom. In sum, each aspect of learning cycle, namely experiencing, reflecting, conceptualizing, experimenting and re-experiencing needs vigorous attention for us to become experts in the art of learning while at the same time honing our skill in taking bodys wisdom by better experiencing of the body. Now, we will shift the focus from self to group. The groups have tremendous power in shaping our life. In next chapter, other dimension of this powerful influence in our lives is explored and how we can harness their power to transform our lives.

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CHAPTER 8

GROUPS POWER TO TRANSFORM MY LIFE


Choose groups that help us in our lives and also benefit the society. All of us are members of some group or the other. In fact most of us are members of many groups simultaneously. To some groups we are emotionally very close while towards others we may be very formal or emotionally distant. The reality of our life is that we are born in a small group, our own family, to which we are generally very close. This close family group has the most profound effect on our personalities and consequently our life. Dynamics of the group in its influencing our life is a fascinating story. It is a grey-area of expertise where very little is known to a common person, yet its influence on every ones life is the profoundest. The more we can understand its influence on us the more we can use it to transform our lives for the better. Also avoid falling prey to its vicious use by some unhealthy groups. Let me give you two examples, one of positive influence and the other of negative impact, for illustration. I will give the negative influence illustration first, because it has shaken the very foundations of the civilized society and is continually increasing in its vicious influence. I am talking about terrorist groups, whether it is Osama Bin Laden in Afganistan/ Pakistan with their fidayeens (suicide squad) or Tamil Tigers with their sui-

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cide squad. Or any other such group spread all over the world including underworld dons gangs. You can imagine the influence of the group from the fact that persons are willing to sacrifice their lives for their groups cause! While for the positive side illustration I can quote an example of professional associations where to acquire the membership one has to excel in that particular field. In order to acquire the membership one works for ones growth in that particular field which is beneficial for both the person himself and the society. Coming back to the dynamics of groups influence, the most important factor is that each one of us wants to belong and be loved. This is the most fundamental of all needs and shapes our destiny whether we are aware of it or not. When we are new to some group, we discover that some people are at the center of the group around whom the whole of group revolves. Let us imagine this group to be Osama Bin Ladens Jehadi group. (You must be feeling revulsion at the thought of being a member of this group, but just imagine it for a while). The scenario in this group goes something like this. There is this Osama as the charismatic leader, his coterie of henchmen and other lieutenants who are at the helm of affairs controlling inflow and outflow of money, instructing or sending people on different missions and strategy makers of the group. They have also created a pecking order for different members depending upon their smartness in carrying out missions critical and past achievements in such missions or any such criteria. Yes, those members who have agreed to become the fidayeen (suicide squad member) get the highest respect and are the most prestigious members! Osama, often praises them publicly among all the group meetings or taped audio discourses. 103

He enjoys such charismatic power that whatever he says is the law and all the followers role model after him. He excites them with emotional appeals like kill the kafirs (unfaithfuls), go on jehad and so on. Now, the critical dynamics are happening inside me, who has joined this group very recently. I also want to enjoy the respect and love of the core group or actually want to be part of this in-group. Right now I feel I am in the out-group i.e. group of persons who are not enjoying the central position in this Jehadi group.There is this intense desire in me to become the in-group. This makes me vulnerable to all their reasonable and unreasonable demands on me. It is my desire to become in-group member. This desire of mine is making me vulnerable to them. The power to free myself from their demands is with me if I let go of this desire. I will try to get the in-group membership by adopting the culture and values of this group. Whatever brings me closer to Osama and his core group, I will do e.g. I will also go on mission-critical, give brilliant ideas, and may even opt for becoming a fidayeen. And all this determines the course of my future life! I am not even realizing that I am getting sucked in this cauldron of evil of killing people because right now I am hooked to getting love and respect of this in-group. Moreover, I carry this in-group values all the time inside my head as my Social Self. This in-group need not even be physically present to exert their influence on me. Even if I am in US on some mission, I keep getting positive reinforcements from my own Social Self for progressing in my mission. Inside I am imagining how happy the boss will be when he hears I blew the tallest building in the world and feel proud of myself! Wow! What influence and that too from remote without even any kind of physical or electronic or extra104

sensory contact! Does that make us realize the power of groups we belong to? It is really critical to be aware of our groups influence on us and choose groups that help us in our lives and also benefit the society. I will now give you one or two examples of a positive influence of group in my life. I want to move to the in-group of a professional group of T-group trainers. And to get in that is a rigorous process involving thorough grounding in various skills of T-group training. I am subjecting myself to fulfilling all the demands for acquiring those skills whether justified (according to them) or sometimes unjustified (according to me), to get in this in-group. I am growing as a person as well as a professional in this process. It is my desire to get into this in-group. So the power is with me; if I decide ok, enough is enough, I do not want to subject myself to these kind of unjustified demands on me, I am free to walk out and get out of this suffocating influence, if it is so. I never let go of my powers to influence my life! Similarly, I have acquired an in-group membership of one spiritual organization. I worked for becoming the trainer (in-group member) there by doing some intense meditations and yoga-aasans, and other spiritually uplifting training. It is helping me as well as the society. Again, a good family and even extended families exert their influence on us similarly. May God bless us the in-group memberships of uplifting groups! The power of groups is available for us to tap. Do we use this power?

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CHAPTER 9

ATTITUDES THAT HELP


Attitude, as stated earlier, is our stance towards a person(s) or an object(s). Technically, it is defined as a learned predisposition to behave in a consistent manner towards a person(s) or object(s). For instance, if my colleague expresses a favourable attitude towards my boss, I understand that he likes him and will probably support him during the crucial meeting coming next week. There is favourable evaluation of the boss by my colleague resulting in his feelings of liking for him. Also there is a belief that the boss will protect our interests in times of need and my colleauge will also support the boss in his time of need i.e. during the ensuing crucial meeting. We may say that an attitude has three main components: Evaluations that cause feelings, behavioural that leads to action and beliefs on which opinions are based. Different people have different attitudes based on differences in each ones evaluation, feelings, beliefs or exposure. In terms of our different selves, primarily, attitude is the building block of our Social Self. While during formation of attitudes our Executive Self may or may not have contributed by examination of reality and information processing. Sometimes attitudes are just picked up by us from others without their being subject to examination of their different facets. For instance, gender or racial prejudices are attitudes that we just pick up from others whereas my attitude towards my work may have been well thought 107

out. The feelings generated by these attitudes are mostly in the Instinctive Self though they may also be in the Social Self. For instance, the feeling of anger towards my boss is in Social Self, triggered by my antagonistic attitude towards him ( remember the phenomenon of flipping to Social self?). A healthy attitude is one that enhances life and is realistic. In other words, the evaluation of the situation is objective, beliefs on which it is based are realistic and life enhancing and feelings it is associated with are primary (Instinctive Self). With this background, I present below some attitudes on few important aspects of our life.

LIFE IS LIVED BY LIVING IN THE MOMENT


Happiness is in the here and now and never in the future! When I was a small child studying in class second, I wanted to be big like my brother who was in class eighth. I thought I should be happy when I will use watercolours for painting instead of pencils and do science experiments like the older student used to do. When I grew up a little and was in class seven, I also wanted to be in the medical college like my brother. I thought I should be happy when I will get admission in medical college. When I got into the Engineering College, I thought I should be happy when I will get into prestigious civil service job like my father. When I was in job with Indian Multi-national, I thought I should be happy when I set up my own company and consultancy. Then I started questioning myself, will I ever be 108

happy or spend my life in its pursuit? Happiness is always one step ahead of me like the distant horizon where sky and earth meet. I underwent a valuable experience when I was about twenty-two, during my association with a great saint. I realized one day that one solid part of me has remained the same since my childhood and it is the feeling of the core of my being. It remains the same forever and forever. This was a startling discovery that made this whole life seem like a dream. Dream is something that happens during sleep and does not affect my daily life a wee bit. It affects me in my sleep while it lasts where I may imagine becoming a king or beggar and enjoy or suffer accompanying feelings. However, the moment I am awake it is of no significance because it leaves no impression on my wakeful life. My wakeful life remains completely unaffected by all that happens in the dream. Similarly, I realized that if this part of me remains unaffected by all that happens to me and remains such even after death. The law of conservation of energy can be applied here. Death can convert energy but can not destroy it. Then for this part of me, my life in this world is nothing but a dream. Wow! When I die, the show on earth will come to an end without affecting me even a wee bit. I will remain the same forever and ever. It is timeless because no change happens here. Whereas, mind with its thoughts is mostly in the past or future. Hence, my sadhana or discipline consists in staying in the here and now which is the secret of true happiness as well. Happiness is in the here and now and never in the future! 109

Soon I realized this is only halfway through the journey, there is another important task left. Control of my mind! I was still far away from happiness, which meant I needed greater understanding of life and vivek or discrimination to sail through life without getting entangled. It is the suffering born of entanglements from unfulfilled desires that made me examine my life with greater vigour. There is this confidence that not even death can touch me and I am safe despite all the tribulations I create in my life. I have come to this understanding that bare minimum desires and that too only those ones, which are for the good of this life, can bring my mind under control. The mind becomes stormy when I have strong attachments and aversions that toss me into past or future. The detachment comes with subtler understanding of all the influences on my mind. Only when we make Save the Mind a passion of our life. I am very clear that without this burning passion, one can not achieve control of mind. It helps us manage the myriad distractions that create storms in our minds. This emotional energy of passion to save the mind helps us in both ways, one it enables our quick recovery from disturbances and secondly it makes distractions difficult. Peaceful mind, which remains undisturbed by all the tribulations, is the greatest achievement for any man on this earth. Since, attachment and aversions are born of our ignorance of our true self, the effort should be to find out who I am and then abiding in that being. That being is always in the now and here. We experience time because of change happening all around us. If no change occurs and everything freezes this moment for say hundred years then we wont be able to sense those hun-

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dred years because of lack of any change. Similarly for sensing of space, a change and material substance is required in three dimensions. This self, The Spiritual Self is beyond time and space i.e. is changeless and is not made up of any substance with three dimensions of space. It is pure awareness. This way one goes beyond time and space dimension of life. Staying in the here and now is the best strategy for happiness. Benefits are that one gets in touch with the Spiritual Self and aware of all that is happening to one. One also avoids the regrets and pains of past and fears and anxieties of the future while experiencing the true joy of ones own self, which will always be there. It does not depend on anything from outside thus making us free. In other words true happiness comes by being in the here and now. True means something that is eternal. In sum,staying in the here and now becomes a sadhana, a discipline and this leads to important discoveries about oneself and the world at large. It is the secret of secrets for true empowerment of oneself. Otherwise life remains a perpetual pursuit of happiness which keeps moving away like the horizon.

MONEY- ITS POWER AND IMPOTENCE


Character building is a long drawn process where short-term gains have to be sacrificed for long-term gains. In Indian culture and I suppose elsewhere too, Money is the new god. The means used to acquire it are 111

not so important, while its abundance is a must. It bestows status and power. Let us examine in detail what this god can and cant do for us. Money gives me following: 1. It enables me to satisfy my basic needs for varieties of food, shelter, and clothing; 2. It provides me with the comforts like car, airconditioner, refrigerator, TV, stereo system, camera, computer and so on; 3. It enables me to enjoy luxuries of a good house, big air-conditioned car, fine clothes, five star food, game of golf, Laptop computer fully loaded and so on; 4. It enables me to have the best health care in time of need; 5. I can travel to where-ever I want with the best mode of transport and stay in five star hotels; have vacations at the finest destinations in the world; entertain my friends and acquaintances; 6. It enables me to have the best education for myself and my family members at the best universities and schools, read the most expensive books and buy the similarly expensive CDs and other aids; attend the most expensive training programmes anywhere in the world; 7. It enables me to have servants and assistants to run errands for me; 8. It also enables me to have the services of various gurus in varied fields; 9. It frees me from the worry of working to earn my bread for the morrow, about treatment of my health problems, about admission to good school for my children; in short it gives me freedom and security from these issues;

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10. It may enable me to impress others and acquire power, improve the snob appeal for me and my family, give me status in the eyes of my family and outsiders; 11. It may boost my self-esteem, though it is not always so. Now, let us examine what money can not provide: 1. It can not add years in my life; 2. It can not give me health though it can give health care; 3. It can not necessarily give me good feelings and temperament; 4. It can not give me happiness of a good family and children; 5. It can not give me the confidence that comes with having necessary life skills; 6. It can not give me spiritual joy, true love and enlightenment; 7. It can not free me from anxieties and worries; 8. It can not deliver me from the negative feelings of hatred, fear, anger, jealousy, frustration, guilt, self-pity, low self esteem and confidence, conflicts and fights with others, internal conflicts, insomnia, chronic pains; similarly it can not stop others from inflicting hatred, pain, and other negatives to me; 9. It can not give me the joy of true friendship, loyal & devoted wife and friendly & loving children; 10. It can not give me the joy of sound sleep; 11. It can not give me the permanent security, feeling of lightness and gaiety and compassion for others; it can not give me my childlike innocence; 113

12. It can not make me a sensitive and evolved human being who enjoys the finer things of life like music, meditation, art, poetry, literature etc; 13. It can not free me from various fears and fear of death and destruction; 14. It can not stop death from snatching me away and ending this dream of life. So what is my attitude towards money, the new God on the horizon. God bestows all the goodies of life through money so I respect it as a good servant. However, it is a bad master because it makes people slog for it and lose their humanity in its pursuit, at times. It gives me power to do both good and bad so I need to be its master. It is an instrument for me to live happily so I respect it, but only as an instrument. In real life do I lie and cheat to get it? Mostly no, but sometimes in weak moments, yes. Can I reach the goal of perfect honesty? May be, yes. An Indian Industrys doyen and a living legend, Mr. N Narayan Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies, Indias largest software company says that in Corporate Governance main issue is of character building of businessmen, government officials and politicians. Where is this elusive character? And who is bothered about character? Small voices like his can be heard about character, however, in order to make it a powerful voice that has an impact on the ground level; society needs to amplify this inaudible voice. That can be done by giving importance to such role models as Narayan Murthy through media, public offices, or by rewarding high character schoolteachers and honest businessmen, government officials and politicians. It will be a long drawn process where short-term

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gains have to be sacrificed for long-term gains. Can we expect that in Indian society or in other cultures? What interventions can we make as individuals to catalyze this process of character building? What powers I can harness in this direction? These are some of the questions we all need to explore and find answers to.

WORK- THE AXIS OF OUR LIFE


What a person does reveals a lot about him or her. The quality our day to day life depends on the kind of work we do. I derive my maximum self-esteem from my work. Major part of my life revolves around work. If I perform well in my work I earn my livelihood well, I get respect in society, I feel good about myself and last but not least the society benefits from my work. People without satisfactory work get stressed and feel worthless. I remember, in my first job with an Indian multi-national company, after a year in the job I discovered that there was hardly any work there. Most of the people in that department were idle and did not know how to spend their time. It was one of the most frustrating experiences for me; my talents were not being utilized, lack of work created its own stress of boredom. There was anxiety that I am wasting my time and not growing professionally at that young age. Similarly I know from my fathers experience of retirement that left him suddenly without his daily work. It affected his self esteem tremendously and was quite a sad experience. In our Hindu scriptures, especially the Gita, it is very clearly mentioned that no man can live 115

without working whether one wants it or not. It is through work that we derive our satisfactions and frustrations, our growth and well being and earn our livelihood to meet our day to day needs. The first question we want to ask when we are introduced to strangers is what do they do. What a person does reveals a lot about him or her. The quality our day to day life depends on the kind of work we do. If we love and enjoy the work, life is heavenly or if we hate or dislike our work then life is hellish. It can be anywhere somewhere between these two extremes. If we want to improve the quality of our life we need to give ample attention on the kind of our work and our attitude towards work. If my attitude towards work is like worship to God, I will treat it as a sacred activity and that means I value it a lot, give great regard to all the aspects of my work and do them well. Nothing is more important than work for me then. Nothing can stop me from succeeding in life if I hold this attitude towards work. This is also the secret of excelling in ones work. Moreover, if we love and enjoy the work we do, our customers will also enjoy the fruits of our labour more, because a product of love has to be a quality product; it can not be otherwise. While choosing various suppliers and service persons for my organization and home I usually try to figure out whether the person loves his work or not. And invariably it turns out that when a person loves his work he performs well in all the aspects of his work. Ones love is visible in ones work. If the attitude towards work is to do it somehow, then shoddy work will be the result. One of my employees is so devoted to

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work early even when we do not pay him anything extra for that. His devotion to work not only benefits us it benefits him too in terms of respect, power, good pay and perks. It is a virtuous cycle. The key to a quality life lies in our attitude towards our work. We have the power to change our attitudes and thus transform our life.

YOUTHFULNESS- OUR NATURAL SPIRIT


When the storm comes, it uproots the stiff and tall trees that refuse to bend while it does no harm for the flexible bushes and grass that bend with the wind. Our Morning Yoga instructor has one favorite saying that he intersperses with his instructions on various yoga-aasans : Stiffness is old age, flexibility is youthfulness. He says that with reference to body ,however, I would extend the same to our psychological orientation as well. The moment one mentions youthfulness the image of energetic, exuberant, ambitious and flexible youth that are lithe and blithe, comes to mind. And when I think of old age the image of old, infirm, dependent, soft and sober persons comes to my mind. In India we do respect the old so the image is not entirely always of rigidity but wisdom is also associated with it. To me the chief characteristic of youthfulness is the lightness and naturalness that is based on flexibility and energy. Stability is different from flexibility in that one can be flexible for stability. When the storm comes, it uproots the stiff and tall trees that refuse to 117

bend while it does no harm for the flexible bushes and grass that bend with the wind. This analogy captures the spirit of flexible attitude in facing the situations of life. Adjusting quickly with change is the chief characteristic of flexible individuals. Mindsets are the blocks to flexibility. Practice in solving problems in one way tends to give people a set to use the same rules on other problems. Mindset is the secret behind number of jokes and tricks. Take this test for a minute: pronounce these names- Macdonald, Mactavish, Macraveesh and Machinery. The last word is likely to be pronounced as MacHinery. This mindset tends to block our creativity, more so with passing years. In her book on Mindfulness, Langer has clearly demonstrated with live experiments that mindfulness helps in slowing the aging process. Mindfulness involves freshness in perception. Seeing the same old flower but not by taking it for granted but enjoying it again and again. I often look at my two-year-old son, Samik, and marvel again and again at his lissome body, mischievous look and innocent eyes. Mindfulness is an essential tool to enhance our creativity. Creativity is one of the most powerful potentials in us to transform our destiny for the better. It can be used to enhance the quality of our relationships, do well in jobs and business and in general achieve more in life. It is the hope of mankind and most of the progress achieved so far has been due to the creative faculty of man. In my experiences of training programes on Creativity, I have seen people move from hopelessness in life to hope and optimism; they feel empowered that yes they can do more in life to change their life situ-

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ations and then actually do that. Creativity is spurred by an attitude of openness to experience and acceptance. Openness and acceptance is fostered in a trusting and warm culture which all of us can cultivate. It is not easy but definitely possible if we work towards becoming a better and understanding human beings. Another very important way to understand youthfulness would be to examine the dynamics of our different selves. Most critical for youthfulness is the flexibility in our Social Self because our attitudes and values tend to become frozen and more so with age. We stop examining and revising the same with the change of circumstances and times. Similarly if we have a strong Instinctive Self, then our flexibility and ability to enjoy life will remain high, rather we may enhance this capacity with age. This part of personality also provides the high energy if not cowed down by the critical part of the Social Self with its shoulds and should nots, rights and wrongs or OKs and Not Oks . The rewards are much more than the efforts in becoming a better human being, that is for sure. Youthfulness is one of the many rewards.

SEX-THE FRUIT OF LIFE


Sir, I left her on the banks. Are you still carrying her? I was born out of sex, so it has to be something beautiful and sacred! There is so much misconception or unhealthy attitudes about sex that it needs to be sent to laundry for thorough wash. Why are so many problems associated with this phenomenon? Mainly, because it can result in unwanted preg119

nancies. There are also instances of forced sex and incestuous relationships which have created massive fear in the society of sex going out of control. This perhaps has resulted in society creating tough norms to control sex in the process labelling it as dirty and unhealthy. There is also the phenomenon of cultural dichotomy. Initially children, adolescent and unmarried young persons are forbidden sex and then suddenly after marriage they are asked to have as much sex as they want within marriage. The young are expected to have no inhibitions and problems in sex now after marriage. In Indian society there may be instances that for the rest of their lives couples may not enjoy sex because of attitudes acquired during growing up years. More so for females because they are inhibited more strongly by our society. Each act of sex is followed by pangs of guilty induced by the Social Self. Growth would involve permission to enjoy sex in the Social Self of the person. It is sheer denial of the fruit of life or the basic desire of the Instinctive Self. Sex is the strongest instinct in human beings and no wonder its suppression by the society leads to all kinds of sex related ills including obsession about sex in the minds of majority of people. There is a beautiful story regarding this obsession with sex due to its suppression. Once, two monks, one young and another old, were going to a place, which was across the river. It was a rainy season and the river was in full stream almost flooding the banks. When they reached the banks of the river, a young and beautiful lady was also waiting there to cross it but was afraid to go inside the full stream river. When she saw the monks she requested them to help her cross the same. The young monk put her on his shoulders and safely crossed the river. Both the monks went their way

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ahead leaving the lady towards her path. After going for a while, the old monk asked the young one, How could you lift the lady on your shoulders? You are a monk and are supposed to stay away from the females; dont you know that? Young monk was startled at this interrogation. He looked at the old monk and said calmly, Sir, I left her on the banks. Are you still carrying her? Most of us are still carrying the sex on our shoulders. There are rapes and sex crimes for which societies also need to examine as to how can they create healthy attitudes towards sex. In our society, everybody is aware of existence of prostitution but still it is not legalized resulting in undue hardships for both the customers and the prostitutes. Prostitutes provide a safe and time saving outlet for sexual urges, however, since this form of sex is devoid of mutual respect besides treating a person like an object, there is an element of ugliness in it. The best would be when mutual consented sex between persons is respected and allowed freely after a certain age say fourteen or fifteen. By this age people can be properly educated and unwanted consequences can be avoided. Moreover, a healthy society would take necessary action in case of unwanted pregnancies, as there should be no stigma attached. Additionally, an easy availability of safe termination of pregnancies should be possible. No doubt effective sex education is the best bet against such unwanted consequences but since human beings are selfish and can act impulsively, these consequences can not be ruled out. There is another very important dimension of this issue relating to sex outside marriage. Cheating ones partner is suicidal for the relationship. In times of temp121

tations it is wise to remember what Christ had said, Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do to you. Only persons with very well developed Social Self and strong Executive Self can control the strong urge (to cheat ones partner) of the Instinctive Self. Once this cheating by partner is discovered then only God can save such marriage. It weakens the bond of relationship or if this selfish relationship continues then it may have many unhealthy consequences for all the members of the family. It creates bad karma. If one sows pain, one will have to reap pain. Flirtations within healthy boundaries are welcome. They energize people (Instinctive Self can have a safe fun) and create affectionate atmosphere. In offices where married persons of both the genders work together, the proximity may result in strong affections but then one has to respect the boundaries for the sake of everybodys wellbeing. That is why it is important to empower oneself to exercise proper control over ones own self during such temptations. Within boundaries one must enjoy sex to the full without any guilt or fear. It is the fruit of life and a sacred process. For young friends, I may inform that masturbation is a very safe way to relieve oneself of sexual tension and is in no way harmful if resorted to within normal limits. There is no need to feel guilty for masturbating even after marriage. It is practiced irrespective of age. One may give full play to ones imagination and fantasy, as one does not harm either society or others or self with it while at the same time relieves the sexual tension and enjoys the process. No doubt, balance is best in everything and so is it in sexual enjoyment. Sublimation of sex is also possible yielding different kinds of pleasures. One of the benefits

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is high psychic energy when one abstains from it for longer duration. However, middle path is the best!

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CHAPTER 10

*THE ULTIMATE BLOSSOMING!


Yallabhdhwa Puman Siddho Bhavati, Amrito Bhavati, Tripto Bhavati! ( One becomes perfect, eternal and fulfiled by finding That) Only lucky few get to this state of complete fulfilment, eternal life and perfection. It is each ones potential and possibility, however. This spiritual and emotional enlightenment is the aim of human life. We start the journey of our life with all kinds of desires and the pursuit of their fulfillment with restlessness and trishna ( discontentment and hunger for fulfilment of desires) as our constant companion. Whereas, the ultimate blossoming is a state of complete tripti - a state of fulfillment and inherent joy. What distinguishing characteristics define this personality which has reached this state? The chief feature is that one acquires childlike innocence and simplicity along with the wisdom of the age. The broad sketch of this person is described in following paragraphs. This is the description of model of self-actualized individual given by Maslow modified here and presented in the framework of personality parts i.e. of Social , Eecutive and Instinctive Self. *I thankfully acknowledgeAbraham Maslows ideas on self
actualisation which have been further modified to fit the framework presented here.

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The Social Self: 1. They have a benign Social Self i.e. a relative lack of overriding guilt, of crippling shame, and of severe anxiety. 2. They accept themselves, and their own nature without complaint; accept others and situations. They can take the frailties and sins, weaknesses, and evils of human nature just as one accepts the wetness of water and hardness of rocks or greenness of trees. 3. They have non-judgmental innocence in relating with others and situations i.e. childlike 4. They enjoy the animal appetites such as food, sleep, sex etc. 5. They have no disgust and aversions with body products, odours and functions. 6. They have an absence to an unusual degree of cant, guile, hypocrisy, front face, game playing, trying to impress in a conventional ways. 7. They do feel guilty (or ashamed, anxious, sad or regretful) about discrepancies between what is and what very well be or ought to be. For instance, shortcomings such as laziness, thoughtlessness, loss of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy, and shortcomings of ones culture. 8. They follow the conventions and rituals generally since they have no wish to hurt or fight over trivialities. The cloak of conventionality rests very lightly upon their shoulders and is cast aside if it inhibits them from doing something they consider important. They are conven125

tional voluntarily and by design. 9. They have code of ethics that are relatively autonomous and individual rather than conventional. They are the most ethical of people. They have definite moral standards, do right and do not do wrong. Their notions of right and wrong and of good and evil are often not the conventional ones. 10. They attempt to grow to perfection and to develop more and more fully in their own style. 11. They work within a framework of values that are broad and not petty, universal and not local, and in terms of century rather than the moment. It seems to impart certain serenity and lack of worry over immediate concerns that make life easier not only for themselves but for all those who are associated with them. 12. They seem to be able to retain their dignity even in undignified surroundings and situations. This comes in part from their tendency to stick by their own interpretation of a situation rather than to rely upon what other people feel or think about the matter. 13. They are responsible and selfdisciplined. 14. The determinants of satisfaction and of the good life are for them the inner individual self and not the social individual self. They are strong enough to be independent of others opinions and affections. For them the honours, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love society can bestow becomes less important than self-develop-

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ment and inner growth. 15. They can be and are friendly with anyone of suitable character regardless of class, education, political belief, race or colour; in other words they have a true democratic character. They are humble and respectful of others; give a certain quantum of respect to any human being just because he or she is a human individual. 16. In a very real sense, they have love or rather compassion for all of humanity. Their anger and hostility is not character based but situational. 17. They are less inhibited, less bound, in a word less en-cultured and therefore more spontaneous, more natural and more human. 18. They make an accepting, calm, good-humoured everyday effort to improve the culture, usually from within, rather than to reject it wholly and fight it from without. The Executive Self: 1. They have an unusual ability to perceive the reality accurately e.g. to detect the fake and the dishonest in personality, in art and music, in politics and public affairs, in scientific matters and so on. 2. Their perception is less distorted by wish, desire, anxiety, fear, other emotions, optimism or pessimism. In other words, they have an illusion free perception of the real world. 3. They live more in the real world of nature than in the human made mass of concepts, abstractions, expectations, beliefs, and 127

stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.They have an innocent eye 4. Their intellectual capacity is high. 5. Extremely important characteristic of theirs is that they have superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general. Fromm, a great psychologist, has this to say for common people: average, normal well-adjusted people have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, and of what their own opinions are. 6. They are problem centered and not self centered. They have some mission in life, some task to fulfill, some problem outside their own selves, which enlists much of their energies. These tasks are for the good of humanity in general. 7. They are concerned with basic issues and eternal questions i.e. philosophical and/ or ethical issues. They live in the widest possible frame of reference. 8. They have a high degree of focus and concentration. 9. They display a peculiar quality of detachment visible in their ability to sleep soundly, to have undisturbed appetite, and to be able to smile and laugh through a period of problems, worry and responsibility. 10. They have an autonomous character i.e. self-deciding, self-governing, active, deciding rather than being a pawn. They are strong rather than weak. 11. They have more free will

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and are less determined than average people. 12. They are hardy individualsmaintain a relative stability in the face of hard knocks, blows, deprivations, frustrations, and the like. 13. They are grateful for their blessings and count them. And do not get stuck with the negatives in life. They retain ones constant sense of good fortune and gratitude for it. 14. In a certain profound and meaningful sense they resist enculturation and maintain a certain inner detachment from the culture. They weigh it, assay it, taste it and then make their own decisions. 15. They are very strong persons. Capable of extraordinary and unexpected ruthlessness. The Instinctive Self: 1. They have a trust in the unknown- accept it, are even more attracted to it than by the known. In other words, tolerate ambiguous and unstructured. 2. They tend to be good animals- hearty in their appetites and enjoy themselves. 3. They lack defensiveness, pretensions or pose. 4. Simplicity, spontaneity and naturalness mark their behaviour. 5. They positively like solitude and privacy. 6. They have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, 129

and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become for others. Any sunrise may be as beautiful as the first one, any flower maybe of breathtaking loveliness, even after a million flowers have been seen. Even a casual workaday, moment to moment business of living, at times, can be thrilling and exciting. 7. They have mystic or peak experiences regularly- the feelings of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, loss of placing in time and space. These experiences result in strengthening and transforming of daily life. 8. They have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general - a feeling of belonging to a large family. This is the cause of genuine desire in them to help the human race. 9. They have deeper and more profound interpersonal relations than average individual. They are capable of more fusion, greater love, more perfect identification, and more obliteration of the ego boundaries than commonly seen. They display an especially tender love for children and are easily touched by them. 10. For them. often, the journey itself becomes the goal. 11. Their sense of humour is devoid of hostility, rebellion or patronizing manner. They have a capacity to laugh at themselves, have appreciation of ridiculous and the absurd. 12. Their creativity in everyday life is childlike and playful, having fewer inhibitions or restrictions. Second naivete i.e. once again nave like a child.

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The above model of three selves offers us a fantastic roadmap for our inner development and growth. One can refer to it time and again to guide ones progress on the path.This is one of the greatest contributions of scientific study of man by the western psychology. In our next chapters we will focus on what the Indian mysticism and philosophy has to offer.

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CHAPTER 11

THE SPIRITUALAWAKENING
In the last chapter we talked of the characteristics of the fully developed personality in terms of the three Selves of ours. In this chapter we are going to elaborate on the fourth part of our personality namely, The Spiritual Self, in terms of its practical connotations. This chapter has four sections starting from excellence in pursuit of spiritual journey to meaning of spirituality for me. The role a spiritual master can play in our lives has also been taken in a separate section. 1. EXCELLENCE IN PURSUIT OF SPIRITUAL JOURNEY I told him there are forces much higher and powerful than the medical knowledge you possesse. Sant Gulab Singh, with whom I was closely associated, once narrated the following real life incident that happened in his interactions with one Sufi mystic, Sain Badshah : . A learned Swamiji once came to us for a few days as our guest. He asked me what I did everyday in the evening. I told him that there is one Sufi mystic, Sain Badshah, I go and sit at his feet. Swamiji asked, Can I also accompany you. Sure, most welcome! Please do come with me today. We went to Sain in the evening and sat with him. Swamiji asked some philosophical question from Sain. Sain Badshah told him, Swamiji, in your room there is 133

this book lying on the third shelf. On page 157 para three you can read the answer to this question. Stunned swamiji, when came home headed straight to his room and looked for the book that was exactly where Sain had said. When he looked up to that page 157 para three, he found the answer to his philosophical question. This is one evidence of the height of spiritual powers developed through meditation and devotion. A second one is similarly narrated below. Our cow was sick with some deadly disease. We called the veterinary surgeon. Despite his treatment the cow condition did not improve even slightly. My wife got anxious and asked me to find some way out to save the poor cow. I told her, O stupid one why are you anxious when we have our Rode Shah with us. Rode Shah was the Sufi mystic residing close to our village with whom I was having close links. We went to him and called him over to our house for helping the cow. The mystic went near the cow and told her in his compassionate style, Dear child, the little one (Calf) is hungry. Give her your milk And lo! Within matter of an hour the cow started feeding her calf and started healing. When the doctor came, he was surprised to see the cow hale and healthy. He wanted to know what happened. I told him there are forces much higher and powerful than the medical knowledge he possesses. This is the power one can have with spiritual devotion and meditation. There are countless examples known and unknown, which vouch for the greatness of spiritual field in helping mankind overcome their limitations. The pursuit of excellence in spirituality is the highest of all human pursuits. One, it helps one to live in a divine mood most of the time. Divine mood is one of

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lightness, celebration, laughter, peace, love and compassion. Second, it helps one to help others get rid of their sorrow by offering understanding and peaceful vibrations. What can be a better vocation than helping others on the path of salvation? Third, it frees one from the negatives like all kinds of fears and other negative & painful feelings. Fourth, it helps to make ones life simple and free from unnecessary cares. Let me take this further by sharing some salient factors that help us in this path of our spiritual unfoldment. One of that is the importance of a spiritual master who can mentor us on this path.

2. IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL MASTER IN OUR LIFE Most of what we learn from others comes to us by watching and modeling. The mentor has the most important role to play in spiritual unfoldment. In our Indian tradition, spiritual master(SM) or guru performed this role in addition to bigger role of helping persons to realize their true eternal self. The mentor or SM has the power to replace the unhealthy permissions and injunctions with the healthy ones. To cut the unhealthy influence of our childhood significant others (SOs) there is need of more powerful SOs in our adult life to undo the deeply ingrained influences of former SOs. There is no other way to replace the permissions and injunctions given to us in our 135

childhood. And mind you these influences have far reaching impact on our lives. SM is a person who has realized his/her true eternal self in addition to having a profound understanding of human mind and life. They have profound understanding because they devote all their energies in excelling in that. They also have remarkable skills in transmitting this understanding to others who care to be their disciples. They act as catalysts in changing the entire course of the life of their disciples. While at the same time they do not make their disciples dependent on them. This is a critical factor because phony gurus available in the market make their disciples dependent on them rather than freeing them from all kinds of unhealthy dependence. Most of what we learn from others comes to us by watching and modeling. That has been the way since our infanthood. The SMs teach their disciples by providing a great model. We have an inherent tendency to pick up learning cues, below our conscious awareness, from the entire being of the other person. We do so in the case of SMs also. Their very being teaches us more than all the words can do. Great SMs hardly indulge in preaching, their life is their teaching because they know that preaching can hardly influence a man towards changing life for the better. It may motivate for a while, it may intellectually stimulate and titillate but it can not transform. Transformation comes with live modelling of the SMs. Chiefly, they also provide healthy permissions and remove unhealthy injunctions for their disciples. This paves the way for joyful living and also the ultimate realization of ones true eternal self. Truth is something that does not change, which

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is eternally the same. Our self is pure awareness which is timelessly unchanging in its nature besides being peace and joy. There is a beautiful story regarding our spiritual heritage and its search by all of us. In olden times, a rich merchant was preparing to go on a business tour. A thief eager to rob the rich man came to him. Dressed in fine clothes and pretending to be a merchant himself, he said, I also have to travel the same route. It is not safe to venture forth aone when one is carrying money. Let us make the journey together! The merchant accepted the suggestion. In the morning before starting from the inn, the merchant would take out all his money, count it carefully and put it back into his pocket. He did this quiet openly while the thief was watching him and planning to steal the money that very night. After a tiring day, they settled down to rest till sunrise and soon the merchant was fast asleep. The thief kept awake. He got up from bed and searched his companions luggage, his bedding and his person. The merchant never as much opened his eyes, but went on snoring peacefully. Try as he might, the thief failed to discover a single penny. This went on day after day. Every morning the merchant counted his money, making the thiefs mouth water, but at night no money was to be found. Finally, in his despair the thief decided to question the merchant. Friend, he said, I must make a confession. I was deceiving you. I really sought your company to get hold of your money. Every night I tried my hardest, but all my efforts to lay my hands on your treasure proved futile, although I searched very thoroughly. Do please tell me, by what magic you kept your money hidden from me! It is quite simple! replied the merchant, laugh137

ing heartily. From the beginning I suspected your evil intentions, yet I was quiet free from anxiety, because I knew that you could never guess my hiding place. Every night the money was lying safely under your own pillow. I was sure that this was one place you would never search and so I was able to sleep most peacefully. God is within everyone but man goes out in search of Him. This is what constitutes Gods Play and Gods Creation. The very presence of the SMs being radiates out the vibrations of peace and joy. Their presence is like the white hole of peace and joy while at the same time acts like a black hole for all the disturbances and thoughts in the minds of those around them. The receptive mind becomes peaceful and quiet in their presence and this makes one realize ones true nature that remains hidden under normal circumstances by whirlpool of thoughts and feelings. Ones true nature of non-choosing witness-like awareness which is unaffected by any happening of this world. To which even the death can not touch. Wow! The ultimate salvation of man. All depends on the attitude of the seeker. In my experience I have observed that the attitude of humility, receptiveness, trust and respect for the SM is best for receiving the highest gift of self-realization. Like if I want to get water from the receptacle, I have to place the container at a lower level for the water to flow in from the receptacle. This is the law of receiving. More so in case of spiritual realization and understanding of mind. I happened to meet my SM by chance. I had a friend, Kuldeep who was a lecturer in English. We used to go for long walks together at the Lake at least twice a week and he would talk about Sant Gulab Singh, a spiri-

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tual saint. I also started going to his satsangs in the mornings. It was nothing special for me but I would go as my friend used to visit him. Then I would go off and on some occasions and not regularly. Later in the year due to some problems in my sisters marriage, I was disturbed and feeling low, helpless and insecure. I decided to visit him and sat with him for about two hours. I felt better. I started going regularly to him in the afternoons and within three days I was feeling extremely well. I experienced the magic in his presence; it made me feel great without any change in the circumstances that were making me feel sad. Eureka! I had found the spiritual master! I was completing my 21st year of existence on this planet when this great event happened. From that day onwards, I would visit him everyday in the afternoons for two hours. He was hard of hearing and spoke little at the ripe age of 102 years. He did not even ask me who I was and what was my name for almost one-year. The attraction at that age was my belief that his presence radiates peace. There were certain experiences of peaceful states while in his company. Suddenly we would discover that our mind is calm and quiet for no apparent reason. Here also during these precious moments I realized that I am the changeless center of awareness beyond death and time. That was possible because the mind came to rest effortlessly while sitting close to him receptively. His mystic presence combined with my desire and earnestness to free myself from the sorrows that affected me did the work. But this was not the ending of suffering like the enlightenment of the Buddha. Definitely it turned the direction of my life energies to inner growth. 139

I am sharing here some of the personality characteristics of Sant Gulab Singh ji which I now realize were really outstanding. He was singularly free from the attachments with his family members like sons, daughters or grandchildren. He treated them as he treated others or us who would visit him everyday. His overall attitude was one of affection, detachment and childlike simplicity. I did not find any desire in him whatsoever for anything whether clothes, money, property, visiting places or for that matter any worldly desire. His trust in God was complete. Let me recount an incident here slightly related to this. One afternoon I was alone with him at about 3PM in a winter month. Before going out in the porch where he used to sit in the afternoon to receive his visitors, he went in to check if there were some snacks like biscuits available for the evening tea. He found there were none. I was also standing close by because I used to assist him in walking. I immediately offered to go to the market and purchase few packets of biscuits. He looked at me and said, Dont you trust in God, he has to arrange for that. You do not need to go and buy the biscuits. I did not go to buy the biscuits and we sat down outside on the porch. After few minutes a visitor walks in with packets of biscuits in her hands. Many such mystical and mysterious events would keep happening to which I was the witness. One such incident that happened with me relates to a minor fall from my bicycle. My cycle got stuck in the open manhole on the side of the road. I fell from the speeding bicycle but not with a thud. I fell from it like a leaf falling from the tree- in slow motion so that when I fell on the road I was not hurt at all. It happened again

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when I fell from the scooter much later. Since Santji was old he would also sometimes fall when struck inadvertently by some object while walking. His fall too was a slow motion fall like the leaf from a tree. These are illustrative events, however, I do not want to draw much attention on the mysterious happenings because more important than that is the qualities of the mind. He was totally aware and alert to every happening around him. He was always in the here and now. He would often remember God by reciting his name, Hari or Rama or Gobind. He had no property and there was no source of income.( He was M.A. LLB and had very successful practice in pre-partitioned India at Rawalpindi that he left long before indias partition. In those days there were few as highly educated persons). He was staying with his nephew who was looking after his needs. I am not aware whether visitors would gift him money. I know for sure that he declined all the offers by his devotees to build an ashram or buy the property for him. He used to have morning one hour sessions of satsang (these gatherings for one hour are called satsangs- the company of the truth, in India) where he would give commentary on Guru Granth Sahib, a sikh scripture containing holy sayings of the saints of India and sikh gurus. Singing of kirtan and bhajans followed the commentary. I often experienced a feeling of having a spiritual bath, which cleansed me of all my negativities after attending these satsangs. This feeling of lightness and delight would last for a while during the day and perhaps is one of the most precious experiences of my life. These experiences have often been repeated later also in such 141

kinds of gatherings and I always look forward to such satsangs even today. I also organize such gatherings now, for precisely having this experience of inner cleansing or spiritual bath. I am able to appreciate his qualities and sayings much better now than at that time. At that time I imbibed his being more than I understood, the learning was more due to modeling than due to cognitive understanding. I am not saying that I became very saintly in his company, but definitely I embarked on this great journey of personal growth which is continuing till this day. I developed a great hunger and passion for this path at that time. Mainly, two aspects motivate me to move forward on this path: one, the great feelings one experiences in meditation and satsangs and second, freedom from suffering by greater understanding of mind and life. Even after more than 20 years on the path I still feel I know very little. What I do not know is far more than whatever I understand or know about human mind and life. The central crux of his teaching was that God is with you and everything that happens in this universe happens by His will. He would often say that if somebody knows some powerful person like a minister or high ranking official, he feels secure that he can overcome any problem with the help of his high ranking friend. What if God, who resides in you and who governs this world, becomes your pal.? That is the case with the devotee of God. God, the all powerful is his friend. How can there be any worry, insecurity or sense of lack for him? He often used to quote- khudadari cha gamdari, a Persian quote which means if you are a devotee of God how can you have any worry. If you have worries then you are not a devotee of God.

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He was the perfect live example of a devotee of God. 3. WHAT SPIRITUALITY HAS MEANT FOR ME I remain the same forever and forever. Nothing can touch me. It is primarily a source of strength to me. My introduction to spirituality was by way of coping with exam and career related stress as a student. I had heard about meditation and chanting Gods name OM from various persons including my school prayers. Let me share the circumstances of those days. During my tenth class I was obsessed with standing first in my class and to achieve that studying became my obsession; there was all studying and no play including erratic and late night sleeps. Obviously it had its emotional impact on me and I was under extreme emotional and relationship turmoil. One day I went on the roof of my house and sat there to pray and chant OM in order to cope with this stress. The effect was tremendous; I felt calm and peaceful. I did not know at that time that this is the beginning of my life long pursuit of spirituality. I am continuing with meditations every day to this day with greater vigour with the passing time. Not only this , there was another very disturbing questioning going on in my mind: what is the purpose of life in general and mine in particular? Why I was born and what I am doing here? It was again a very serious matter for me at that age of fourteen and a half years of age. I asked this question from many persons 143

but none could satisfy me. At forty now, I still am not sure of the answer but my guess is that it is sport of God and nothing more than that. My philosophical questioning and remembrance of God laid the foundation for my spiritual quest. Both the activities were energizing and strength giving. I came in contact with the Ramakrishna Movement and from there I took spiritual initiation. That was at the age of nineteen. I remember spending most of my time in meditating, reading spiritual books and listening to bhajans. All this was very satisfying to me emotionally because it uplifted me to ethereal feelings and kept me happy in general which was a great contrast to my earlier miserable emotional states. The books I enjoyed in those days were of Acharya Rajneesh. I learnt many good insights on life from his books but later and even now have lost all interest in him. I find him verbose and exaggerated. I relish Raman Maharishi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Anandmayee Ma. The real upsurge in my spiritual evolution happened when I got closely associated with a great saint Sant Gulab Singh Ji. He was so unworldly that he would not care to know the personal details of his visitors. He did not know my name and what I did for almost a year. Slowly I became part of his regular devotees and he inquired about me. There are many ordinary and mystical instances which will point to his greatness. The most important realization dawned on me some holy day that I am the pristine awareness, not even death can touch me; I remain the same forever and forever. Nothing can touch me. This has become the an-

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chor of my life and a great strength to bear the ups and downs. There was great vigour in my meditations during those days which laid the foundations for my life. However, it was not the end of pains and struggles for me. They continue to be with me till this day with their usual ebb and flow, but with each passing year I am managing it much better. Santji passed away when I finished my engineering degree in 1985. I did not realize at that time that it was the end of one sweet era of my life. I was twenty two years of age. Spirituality for me today is an unending quest to understand myself and life. Meditations are the source of great strength as well as peace for me. My mission in life is to spread the culture of meditation whereever I can. Meditations help me to clarify, reflect and emotionally uplift me. In times of stress I do fall back on it with greater energy and face life well. It is helping me to become a better human being.The great Love has blossomed. Love is the greatest force on this planet. Let me end the chapter with a small sweet note on Love. 4. LOVE, ARE YOU GOD? What do I seek, Love or the beloved? My earliest memories of warm love are of my playing on top of my mother and enjoying listening to her stories while lying in her cozy embrace. I also recall my father playing with me and calling me by sweet pet names and enjoying my giggles. Was it you God, showering your love through my mum and dad? Was it you again,Love, when my brothers and sister gave their 145

love and friendship to me, their youngest sibling? I do not know any other feeling as sweet as love. Even when I think of above incidents after decades, it fills me with joy and strengthens me. When I grew to be little older, my bonds with my friends were of deep love and friendliness. I still remember the sweetness of my relationship with my neighbourhood friends, the two brothers, Cheekoo and Shaila, one elder and one younger from me by a year or two. We would play cricket, run races, fly kites, go to fairs together. Not only that, once we stole small change from his mothers purse and ate together the sweets bought from that money. We would play tricks on others, laugh together. Was it you God again who came to me through them? And then in my eleventh year, when I sought and gave love to my beautiful classmate, was it you God playing hide and seek with me? She never came to know that I loved her so much. She never expressed her love for me the way I wanted it.I waited almost daily, looking outside the window of my house, that perchance she will come on that road going in front of our house. I went for walks in front of her house almost daily hoping to see her and say hello to her. But alas, I could not tell her openly that I wanted love from her. It was painful not to receive that love. Is love of beloved pain? Or are we ignorant that what we seek is you, Love and not the beloved? Is it the exhilarating feeling of love, that we get from our beloved, we want or we want beloved? Once the beloved stops being the source of that great feeling of love, our interest in the beloved wanes and vanishes. And we start on our search of a new beloved who gives us the same exhilarating feeling. The cycle repeats itself, may I say endlessly. I was in love with my neighbour when I was fifteen-sixteen. I sought her out often on the roads, in front 146 of her house or in the market. I discovered to my delight,

she also liked me and the story was about to set rolling when suddenly, some other beautiful girl, happened in my life. The love for the neighbour just vanished into thin air and now I was madly infatuated with this new girl. She was the stimulus for the exhilarating feelings of love in me. I started ignoring my neighbour friend, a sad circumstance for her. I was a selfish human being, however the saving grace was that we had never expressed our love for each other and I could just walk out without feeling guilty. This raises the question, why should any one give ones precious heart to another when the other can turn away their attention so quickly? It is like placing ones expensive crockery on a shaky ground from where it will fall any moment with the slightest jerk. It is really very risky business when one puts oneself at others mercy. Others mercy because my happiness depends on the others giving their love and affection which is by nature very fickle. What do I seek, Love or the beloved? I seek you Love! My pain and joy is in direct proportion to the intensity of my desire to get my beloveds love, but the moment I am clear that it is not the beloved but the love that I seek, my pain will lessen. See, if I have everything, but nobody loves me what will be my condition? I will hate it. When I am loved, I feel fulfiled! When I seek love and not the love object, my life is easier. I am seeking my source. As Ravi Shankar of Art of Living Foundation puts it: You are made up of a substance called Love, Love is your very nature. Love makes the world go round. I love good things of life, I love my son, I love good house, good car, good women and I work round the clock in 147

pursuit of these. I love attention, I love money, I love love and I go on seeking these in different forms. All my energies are devoted, in essence, in the pursuit of love. So I am in my own pursuit because I am made up of a substance called love. What is the shortcut to this love? Why do I have to pursue so many things, can I find the source and get rid of this tiring pursuit of myriad objects, day in and day out? Yes that is when I get enlightened. Ignorance or avidya is the cause of ego, attachment, aversion and fear of death. Ignorance means that I do not know who am I.

I take myself to be the body with life and do not experience the eternal, changeless, awareness beyond time and space, the nature of which is love. This gives rise to fear of death, attachment and aversion with the objects of the world. The greater the intensity of attachment and aversion the greater the suffering. This is borne out by our everyday experience, the more intensely I desire or hate anything the more vulnerable I become and greater becomes my suffering. From suffering starts the search for a permanent end to it and when once we give our attention to this aspect of our life, the discrimination flowers in us. From discrimination comes the detachment with the objects of desire for our suffering originates there. It is difficult to be detached unless one ends the cycle of ignorance and that is possible by meditating on Who am I. So let us intensify our search for ourself: Who am I? Therein lies the key to enlightenment and eternal love. Jesus you said it well, GOD IS LOVE!!

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CHAPTER 12

HABITS THAT PROMOTE WELLBEING


This will have to be done continually and for a very long time. In this last chapter, I am going to tie up the ideas given earlier in terms of practical day to day living practices. In our everyday life, what affect the quality of our living are our habits and practices of managing life. I have not come across a better understanding and prescription on this subject than that given in ancient Indian scripture of Patanjalis Yoga Sutra (The sutra means a terse one line aphorism which contains profound wisdom). There are two kinds of healthy living practices; one related to behaviours directed towards self and other related to social behaviour. First let us take up those related to self. The sutras prescribe that we should follow the practices given below: Shauch - Cleanliness (of mind, body and environment) Santosh Contentment or Acceptance (of self, others and situations) Tapa Self Discipline Swadhayaya Self study and Self awareness Ishwarpranidhanani Devotion to God Shauch, cleanliness is self evident in the sense that keeping ones body and environment clean is obvi-

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ously good for health. Also signified is the cleanliness of mind. What it means, I leave it for the readers to form their own conclusions. Santosh in simple translation means contentment. However, I extend its meaning to include acceptance of self, others and situations. Discontentment implies non-acceptance. The practice of acceptance combined with desirelessness is prescribed here. If one can practice this in ones day to day life, then there is no doubt that the climate of ones consciousness will definitely be dominated by feelings of lightness, laughter and joy. Most of my problems and sufferings are rooted in non-acceptance of self, others and situations in addition to frustrated desires. Nobody inflicts as much suffering on me as I do myself by my unhealthy desires and non-acceptance of what I have or of my situation. This means the power is with me, I can like what I have and be grateful for all the good things that life has given me. Mind has a tendency that it clings to the so called negatives or painful aspects in perception and stays focussed there. For instance, if I have good health, money to look after myself, happy children, lovely wife but maybe not a good house then I will have tendency to keep cribbing about poor house instead of enjoying my other blessings. Acceptance counters this tendency of the mind, lets me enjoy the blessings, and empowers me to take appropriate action to resolve my negatives. Further, I may not have many desires and keep my life simple. It is a practice to be followed always and not sometimes so that it becomes our second nature to accept life as it comes and have as few desires as possible. Tapa in simple translation means austerity. How151

ever, I understand it as self-discipline, which is also an austerity where we have to delay gratification. Self-discipline means the Social and Executive Self have to keep the demands of the Instinctive Self in check in the short term, for the long term benefit of all the Selves. For instance, the Instinctive Self may want to sleep for longer duration in the cozy bed while the Social and Executive Self may demand that I go for morning walk. This means control of unreasonable demands of Instinctive Self is discipline. Regarding discipline the best simile quoted is the tautness of strings of musical instrument. The music comes when the string is just tight enough, neither too taut nor too loose. Swadhayaya means self-study. Self-study involves self awareness and understanding. Sometimes it is literally translated to mean study of books which is very limited meaning for this term. I have emphasized extensively on this practice in earlier chapters. Personally, I give it the greatest importance and it requires our strong commitment. A life devoted to self study is the best life because it opens the gates of our liberation from suffering and sorrow. Ishwarpranidhanani means devotion to God. I am a tiniest of the tiny creature in this vast universe yet looked after so well by some unseen power that can only be felt. Love and gratefulness for that unseen power, called God, is devotion. Devotion to the highest principle makes our life joyous and light. It is the sweetest practice of all the practices mentioned above. Our quality of life is directly proportional to the degree we follow above practices. And if I follow these practices related to self then I am most likely to follow those related to social behaviour which we can discuss now. Patanjali Yoga Sutra mention the following five prac-

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tices or habits: Ahimsa- Nonviolence in thoughts, words or deeds Satya- Truthfulness Aasteya- Non-stealing Brahmacharya- Continence Aparigraha- Greed or Hoarding In terms of moral character or our social behaviour there is nothing better than what Christ said, Dont do unto others what you do not want others to do to you. And it is beautifully illustrated by the incident wherein people stop throwing stones at a prostitute when Jesus asks them that let that man throw a stone first who has not committed a sin. All of us would love to relate with a person who follows above-mentioned practices. One of the moral codes, continence is the most misunderstood one. By continence I do not understand that it means no sexual contact. It most likely means morality in sexual conduct i.e. not having sex outside marriage. A fully evolved human being is likely to follow these practices. Besides these practices the Sutras explain another very important facet of self-development. It is mentioned that by repeated practice and detachment one can gain yoga (spiritual enlightenment) which is absence of thoughts and feelings waves in the mind (when one gets established in ones true nature of witnessing awareness). However, this will have to be done continually and for a very long time. Besides above the sutra also explain the importance of physical fitness for which yoga-aasans and breathing exercises are recommended. These are also aids to spiritual illumination. I would not go further into details of the sutras but I recommend its proper study as it offers a wise 153

worldview of our life. All the same take this. The Ten Golden Rules to guide ones everyday living. These ten guidelines have been given by Swami Shukdevananda of Rishikesh, Himalayas, India. TEN GUIDELINES FOR GOOD LIVING: 1. Consider this world like a dream/ sansaar ko swapnawat jano. 2. Be ever hopeful and optimistic / Ati Himmat rakho. 3. Continuously be in high spirits, even in unhappiness/ Akhand Praffulit Raho, dukh mein bhee. 4. Remember God as much as possible/ Parmatma ka smaran karo, jitna ban sake. 5. Do not give sorrow /pain to anybody, if possible give happiness/ Kisi ko dukh mat do, bane to sukh do. 6. Be extremely loving towards all/ Sabhi par ati prem rakho 7. Be in fresh childlike state / Nutan balvat swabhav rakho. 8. Follow the norms/ Maryada anusaar chalo. 9. Like ganga river, be always active in work, do not be lazy/ Akhand purusharth karo, Ganga pravawat, aalsi mat bano. 10. Do not do any such act where you have eat the humble pie/ Jismein tumko neecha dikhna pare, aisa kam mat karo Can you relate them with the ideas given in this book? Last Word: In a life devoted to self-study ( swadhyaya) one can attain ultimate freedom. If there are many desires which demand energy in their fulfillment then there will be less time to devote to this aspect of study of self. Only 154

if one has a simple life with as few desires as possible and fewer cares for the worldly life that one lives, can one hope to be devoted to the excellence in self study which will lead to freedom. Let me end with narrating a great incident that happened in real life. Two saintswent to another great saint and were sitting at his feet.The host saint started showering his praise on the visiting saints. One of the visitor said,Maharaj! ( great sire!), You are only praising us. Tell us some of our faults too. The host quips, Why should I bother myself with that? Your sorrows are telling you your faults all the time.

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APPENDIX-I

STRESS IN OUR LIVES*


Stress is an important factor in human life. The way a person handles stress determines the personality one develops. There are both good and bad consequences of stress, and it is a vast field not yet fully understood. Medically stress is defined as the emotional and physiological response to the external stimuli which are perceived threatening to individuals security and safety. We may also define stress as an internal state which can be caused by physical demands on the body (disease conditions, exercise, extremes of temperatures, and the like) or by environmental and social situations which are evaluated as potentially harmful, uncontrollable, or exceeding our resources of coping. It is about feeling unable to cope, rather than being unable to cope. The physical, environmental, personal and social causes of stress state are termed as stressors. Whether or not an event becomes a stressor depends upon the way a person interprets or evaluates that event. Once induced by stressors, the internal stress state can then lead to various responses. On the one hand it can result in a number of physical, bodily responses. On the other hand, psychological responses such as anxiety, hopelessness, depression, irritability, and a general feeling of not being able to cope with the world can result from the stress state. Research indicates that 50 to 70 % of the modern diseases may be stress related, in either causing them or in contributing to them. For example,stress is
*This write up on stress is based on my post graduate thesis on the subject. I thankfully acknowledge the contributions of various researchers and authors whose work has been quoted here.

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often a factor in heart disease and Cancer. Furthermore, stress related diseases cost the world industry trillions of rupees a year ; several trillion tranquilizer pills are prescribed in US, Europe , India and other nations of the world each year; and although it can not be quantified, stress seems to be involved in much of our unhappiness, irritability, and dissatisfaction. Stress is of course an inevitable of everyones life. Some stress is essential, and some actually energising. As Selye,a well known stress expert, stated that complete freedom from stress is death. As we understand from the research done on stress faced by humans in different parts of the world, stress upto a certain extent is useful and it becomes harmful only when it increases in degree and duration, the eu-stress and distress, as it is called. Without eustress we achieve nothing: it provides the pressure and drive by which we create and advance in our lives. Almost any change in environment even a pleasant change , such as a vacation- demands some coping; and a little stress is useful in helping us adapt. But beyond some point, stress becomes distress. What acts to produce distress varies greatly from person to person, called stress reactivity, but some events seem to be stressor for many of us. Chief among these are injuries or infections of the body; annoying or dangerous events in our environments; major changes or transitions in life which force us to cope in new ways; and anticipated or actual threats to our self-esteem. The Social Readjustment Rating Scale, with lifechange units(LCUS) for adults(Holmes,1967), adolescents(Holmes,1967) and elderly people(Muhlenkamp,1975) has been formulated.

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The importance of certain stressors varies throughout life; as the age advances the same stressors cause bigger stress, in general. By adding the life-change units in a year, a life crisis score can be obtained for that year. Not only changes but many on-going situations are stressors too. These include physical stressors such as injury, infection, exercise, noise and climate. In addition the hassles of everyday life centering around work, family, social activities, health and finances are important stressors which have been found to be related to bodily illness. Frustration and the conflicts, which cause frustration, are also major stressors. Besides, chemical (pollution), commuting, decision, emotional, pain, phobic and work stressors are other various sources of stress. It is important to note that when people feel that they can control events, they are less likely to get sick. Research on both human beings and animals has found links between stressors perceived as uncontrollable and various kinds of illnesses, including cancer. Lack of control may also explain another finding that the irritations of everyday life may be a better predictors of physical and psychological problems than are the major events in peoples life. This might be because most people feel that they should be able to control the small things of life, such as avoiding traffic jams, safeguarding possessions so that they are not lost or stolen, and getting along with other people. When these shoulds do not operate, people feel at fault.

Personality factors and stress:


The tendency to experience stress, or the way people cope with stress, may reflect certain personality factors that have been implicated in heart disease. Another study found that those men who were socially isolated and under stress were more likely to die within three 159

years after their heart attacks than men who were more sociable and under less stress( Rubberman, 1984). Friedman and others have suggested that there are two types of people in terms of personality- The Type A and the Type B. The type A behaviour patterns are impatient, competitive, aggressive, and hostile. They act as if they are constantly racing against time and facing challenges. Type B behaviour patterns are more relaxed, easygoing, and unhurried. They cope with their environment more realistically- they do not try to do the impossible, and they do not regard everything, even leisure as a challenge to their control, the way the Type A do. This landmark study found that Type A people, who are mostly men, are more likely to suffer heart attacks in their thirties and forties, whereas Type B people almost never have heart attacks before the age of 70even if they smoke, eat fatty foods, and do not exercise. Rosenman RH found that apparently because Type A people perceive their environment as challenging or threatening, their bodies react to the mildest events almost as if they were fighting for their lives, by secreting excessive amounts of nor-adrenaline hormone. These secretions may damage the lining of the coronary arteries and encourage cholesterol deposits; may cause abnormal heart rhythms, increased heart rate and higher BP; or may trigger blood clots that cause heart attacks. Some have challenged the relationship between Type A behaviour and heart-disease on several fronts. Their study found that among men who had heart attacks, type A men are more likely to survive than Type B men. Other studies have failed to confirm this close relationship between overall Type A behaviour and the risk of having a heart attack.One line of research however 160

suggests that one aspect of Type A behaviour hostility stemming from cynicism about other peoples motivedoes appear to be related to that risk. Not all Type A are hostile , and this fact is important because hostility appears to be the lethal component of Type A behaviour. The implication is that , in adults at least , competitiveness, intensity and other aspects of the classic Type A pattern are not harmful and that treatment should focus only on reducing hostility. In a study Type A people have been taught to temper their reactions to stress while retaining the energy and drive that impel them to succeed. A number of personality variables appear to affect the stressor-stress sequence. Persons who have a sense of environmental mastery report less psychological distress(Johnson,1978). Kobass(1979) reports a similar function for self esteem. The other inner factor that causes stress is the expectation-reality gap and can be handled cognitively and by personality modification.

Stress Cycles: Stress has a number of immediate effects and if the stressors are maintained, long term behavioural, physiological, emotional and cognitive effects occur. If these effects hinder adaptation to the environment or create discomfort and distress, they themselves become stressors and tend to perpetuate the cycle of distress. On the other hand many people have developed ways of coping with stressors so that they are able to respond adaptively. This starts the positive or virtuous cycle of wellness. Effect of stress on health:
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Hans Selye (1976) termed the bodys response to stressors the general adaptation syndrome . The general adaptation syndrome consists of three stages: i) The alarm reaction It is essentially the emergency response of the body. In this stage prompt responses of the body, many of them mediated by the sympathetic nervous system prepare the person to cope with the stress here and now. ii) The stage of resistance If the stressor continues to persist , this stage begins, wherein the body resists the effects of the persisting stressor. However the resistance to new stressors is impaired during this stage. Certain hormonal responses of the body are an important line of defense in resisting the effects of stressor, especially the ACTH- adrenocorticotropic axis. This leads to the release of cortisol into the blood stream. These and other such hormones have many actions which allow the body to deal adaptively with the stressors for long periods of time during the stage of resistance. But maintained high levels of these hormones can be harmful. For example it impairs the immune system of the body and raises the blood pressure. iii) The stage of exhaustion. In this stage, the bodys capacity to respond to both continuous and new stressors has been seriously compromised. For instance due to deficient immune system a person may become sick. Or, because of other stressors-induced hormonal effects like stomach ulcers, diabetes, skin disorders, asthma, high BP, increased

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susceptibility to cancer or a host of other diseases may occur at this stage of resistance. Stress Management : This refers to any programme that reduces stress by understanding the stress response, recognizing stressors, and using coping techniques to minimize stressors, stress reactivity, and or negative consequences resulting from stress. As mentioned above, stress has serious consequences. Several methods of coping have been developed. For example, meditation has been proven to be one effective way to manage stress. Systematic desensitization, hypnosis, biofeedback, the wellness cycle and the relaxation techniques of Herbert Benson etc are some of the other techniques to manage stress. Moreover, the impact of stressors can be reduced if a person has control over the stressor . In addition to Type A factor explained earlier, Pareek has mentioned that personality factors contributing to burnout are externality, a feeling that a person does not have control over what happens and that external factors or fate determines things, low self-esteem, rigidity, alienation, and machiavellism. Also stress tolerance is higher in individuals who have a greater impulse control or self control. Effective coping strategies are approach strategies which confront and tackle the problems, while ineffective ones are avoidance strategies which reduce the stress by avoidance such as denial, substance abuse etc. In general dysfunctional modes of coping may be damaging when they prevent essential direct action, but may be extremely useful in helping a person maintain a sense of wellbeing, integration, or hope under conditions otherwise likely to encourage psychological disin163

tegration. In sum the amount of stress is not as important as the way we cope with it for mental and physical health. Folkman,S, et al for Coping with Stress have proposed eight coping strategies based on the factor analysis of their instrument: 1. Confrontative Coping 2. Distancing 3. Self Control 4. Seeking social support 5. Accepting responsibility 6. Escape- avoidance 7. Planful problem solving 8. Positive reappraisal. Cohen( 1979) have found that some people are better than others at coping with stressors. The more successful copers are said to have these characteristics: 1. They seek information about how to deal with the problem and what their alternatives are. 2. They are prone to take direct action in trying to reduce the impact of stressor. 3. They are flexible in trying to cope, first trying one thing and then another. 4. They try not to deal with the stressor through impulsive actions. 5. They use cognitive or thinking mechanisms such as reappraisal of the situation- to deal with the stressor. Hans Selye,1976 has given following recommendations for dealing with stress: 1. Know yourself, do not seek to

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play the role of another i.e. be authentic; 2. Learn to recognize the early symptoms of stress, and relax when you feel these coming on; 3. Balance work and play; 4. When worried seek a harmless diversion; 5. Learn good sleeping habits; 6. Live in harmony with natural laws: do not seek to dig too deeply into bodily reserves; 7. Pursue excellence; 8. Pursue a philosophy of altruistic egoism: love others and treat them with goodwill, trust and respect; 9. Focus on something greater than yourself, be it God, the Universe or something else, and your troubles will shrink in proportion. Despite our increased knowledge of brain neurochemistry it remains an outstanding issue of how the individual can tackle stress and live in harmony with the world. The best stress programmes will concentrate on avoiding unnecessary stress, while attempting to raise thresholds of tolerance to stressors we can not and should not avoid. The beauty of stress management is that what starts as a simple process , to reduce the pressures in ones life, leads to a deeper view of what ones life is all about. Religion plays a role in tempering the impact of felt stress. Beliefs and values can endow the individual with a strategy for managing suffering, a strategy that 165

can convert the endurance of unavoidable hardship into a moral virtue.( Benson,H.). Similarly the most direct way of coping with work stress is to confront the source of such stress. After studying how the key owners managers of 90 smaller businesses responded to a natural disaster, Anderson et al concluded that organizational effectiveness was significantly related to the use of task oriented coping behaviours.(CR Anderson, 1977) . Some conceptual models of stress underscore the pivotal role of cognitive appraisal in alleviating felt stress(RR McCrae1984) .

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About The Author Pradeep Prakash, is an Applied Behavioural Science professional engaged in his consultancy for corporates in HumanResource training as well as managing his NGO and a small engineering business. In corporate consultancy, he specialises in Self Development, Stress Management, Motivation, Emotional & Spiritual Quotient, Leadership and Empowerment training for executives of all levels. He has a rare combination of training in both the modern Applied Behavioural Science as well as strong spiritual upbringing. He is well qualified with an engineering degree followed by Masters in Business Administration, specialising in HRD. In his career spanning almost two decades, he has touched the lives of thousands of persons. Their love for him and his love for them has helped him to start a movement for celebration of life called UTSAV. UTSAV ( Ultimate Transformation of Self and Values) aims to reach all the strata of people and help them to live a fruitful and empowered life.For this different kinds of projects and training programmes are conducted to practically benefit them in their day to day life. His articles on related issues are widely published in well known magazines. He is often invited to deliver talks on the Quality Living through Empowerment to professional groups and NGOs. His high missionary zeal to spread the message of love and spiritual powers of man gives him enough energy to reach out to any person as and when they need him. He can be reached on his email: pradeepprakash2001@yahoo.co.in or through website: www.pradeepprakash.com 168

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