life – The Colored Mist

In the Frame of Love

“Love nurtures and helps us to grow into compassionate and loving beings” this is something that we have heard, known for a long time. We look for friends who will accept us for who we are and love us all the same. There is so much love between us or so we believe, but most of us like to stay in a neutral ground. We end up talking about neutral topics, which could also be personal but usually something, which continues to maintain the relationship. We shy away from most crucial conversations, even in close relations. So other than the initial relationship fizz, most relationships end up being maintenance relationships, the high maintenance ones fall of naturally as very few people have time and energy to keep nurturing them. In our daily routine we get so used to the maintenance pattern, that all we end up doing is maintaining. So where is Love?

When someone shares their vulnerability with us, it is so difficult to stay and listen to that person fully, our tendency is to make the person see reason and move on quickly. We are so scared of being in the mush pool. The tendency to judge or give advise is so strongly coded into the maintenance program, that anything outside of neutral is an alarm. Our lack of courage to bring our vulnerability out in a safe space and our lack of courage to stay without judgement of others vulnerability, keeps us away from each other. It keeps us away from expressing love.

I have developed a mid level resilient model, around maintenance. It simply helps maintaining things as they are. If everything fell down my mental model allows me to come back to maintenance. What this mental model does is to keep me from exploring what is outside of this frame. It allows me to stretch to a certain point to the boundaries of the frame, but quickly brings me back. So I would never explore outside the frame, I would judge what is outside this frame, I label it, I may even condemn it, sometimes I may gossip about it, but I will definitely keep away from experiencing it. The conversations that I will have in relationships would be safe conversations and I won’t even know that I am having a safe conversation. This keeps my status quo as it is, it becomes my identity. I need to maintain a certain identity to be in the society and my life goes in making sure that this identity doesn’t crumble. Some of us may choose an rebel identity and keep maintaining the status quo of looking outside the frame, there life will go in making sure that they keep looking outside the frame, that is there ‘frame’.

These frames help us stay where we are and also help us grow into the frame. It is a fallacy to believe that people who stay in the frames can’t grow or love, of course they can within the frame. We also contain our love within the frame just about the right quantity which is required to maintain the dynamic of relationships. If we feel more love towards someone, we share it within the frame so as to not overwhelm the other person. This overwhelming is perceived to threaten the balance of the Frame. This is true not only for love but also other emotions, but Love is something we need the most yet we fear to share it and also accept it. With children it is different they have the ability to love with complete vulnerability, and that evokes us to venture out of our frames and show more of our love. In any relationship tin which you want go beyond the frame of maintenance, intentional expression of love evokes the connection. This helps the relationship to evolve into a more richer and wholesome place, where we can discuss matters of heart, with vulnerability and ease, without fear of judgement.

Love is not neutral it is mushy

Creating your Response- Creating your Life

Viktor Frankl so beautifully said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”~Viktor E. Frankl

I have been a very passionate and reactive person, Over the years of working on myself, I feel life has improved considerably for me. Yet there are times when I feel disturbed and also am clamored by the question, “Why does this happen to me ?”. There is a lot of inner work that is still to be done. Recently when I watched the movie, Inside out, many things became alive in me, and I just loved the portrayal of emotions in the movie. In this blog I am sharing somethings that I have learnt over time.

Whenever there is a stimulus or a trigger in our life, we tend to react. In this reaction there is no thought, in fact the reaction happens first and then the thoughts follow. It could be delay in a project, or a statement made by somebody or something that we read about. This is a common phenomena and keeps happening with us until we start questioning the pattern. These patterns create our life story and the reactions become a part of our personality, we also start believing that we are a certain ‘type’. We hold judgements about self based on our reactions and sometimes end up holding, rage, guilt and shame all our lives, unable to forgive ourselves.

To recognize our patterns and how they are governing our life is a must to be able to break them. For this we must be aware of our triggers and how they impact us. This observance is an important skill to develop in order to live a desired life, else our life goes on as an reaction to situations that we keep encountering. Our life is over before we even realize that, we did have a choice of thoughtful response.

Developing this response skill is a matter of practicing observance, and also being aware that our reactions are coming from the way our Brain is wired or programmed. Our brain carry’s our story from the mother’s womb and as our brain develops the different stages of its growth determine our traits depending on the situations that we encounter in our developmental stages. It is difficult to compartmentalize the brain as everything is connected to everything else and it is a complex circuitry that Neuro scientists are still researching. But for ease of understanding there is a simple classification that can be shared. The reptilian brain is the one that develops first, it takes care of our heart rate, breathing, balance, body temperature and other involuntary functions of the body. The mid brain or the limbic brain stores pleasant and unpleasant life experiences and memory of reactions for protection/ self preservation. This part of brain has an almond shaped gland called Amygdala, which acts as a watchman and watches out for potential threats or triggers, which could be real threats or could be illusions created by old memories. However as soon as the amygdala encounters any potential threat it engages a reaction based on previously stored mechanisms of protection and creates a similar experience of familiarity with situation. This is almost like, “You have been through this before, you know this is the best way to go about it, there is no other way and no choice, act now”. Thus causing us to get stuck in a pattern of reactive behaviors. The third and the most evolved part of the brain is the Neocortex, which is the thinking brain, it has helped us develop language, reasoning, consciousness and holds infinite possibilities of learning.

When we wish to live from choice and liberation, it is important for us to engage our Neocortex. The moment Neocortex is engaged, we have a choice, before engaging Neocortex, an action could be a completely thoughtless reaction, which causes much blame, shame and guilt. In order to engage our Neocortex, we must be aware of our triggers and what is it that causes emotional imbalance in us? Being in observance allows us to see our selves and our interactions in a very detached manner, thus creating a non judgmental space, where everything/ everyone is a subject. Practicing mindfulness and meditative practices enhances our ability to be in observance of self and surrounding without reacting. A mindful response can then be chosen. However this requires practice of holding back and engaging the Neocortex. Once you feel a trigger, become aware of what is happening to you and ask yourself,”What is the meaning that I am giving to this situation?” “Is the meaning that I am giving to it empowering me to make a choice or is a mere pattern that I might be following?” When we ask questions from higher consciousness, we engage the Neocortex and the Amygdala is bypassed, thus bypassing any old reaction stored in our Limbic brain. Practicing observance and questioning can help us detach from the reactions that hold us slaves in our own lives.

Response consciousness is not a summit to be reached but a daily practice, without which, the illusion of life and what it should be, will continue. Staying with your breath and observing in a detached manner, allows us to see beyond our old beliefs. Action which emerges from a thoughtful inner deliberation from your higher brain creates the full circle of awareness and alignment that helps in deeper connect.

10 Mysterious Photos That Cannot Be Explained

Description: A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, though fact versus fable can be difficult to determine when evidence is limited and theories run wild. Stories associated with these images are not easy to explain or even not at all probable. Since the beginning of time, man has bared witness to the strange and unexplainable. With no cameras or smartphones to capture these moments, the ancients would scribe what they saw on stone. Lucky for us, today we have the technology to see things that the human eye does not. For example… A father takes a photo of his daughter one afternoon while the two were together outside and no one else around. When the picture is developed, you can clearly see a man in a space suit standing a few feet behind the little girl. Where did he come from? What about the mysterious old lady seen calmly taking photographs of the chaos that proceeded the gunshots that fateful day in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? There are pictures to prove her presence but no records of her existence…intrigued yet?

See mind boggling images that even the most skeptical of the skeptics may have a hard time disputing. Everything from the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, pyramids on the moon, sea monsters to unidentified flying objects hovering around our planets atmosphere, are all captured. Check out the video and see for yourself.

Video and Content Courtesy: The Richest

The Yearning for Work life Balance and What Does it Mean!

In many of my facilitation and coaching sessions, I hear the participants lament about the lack of work-life balance, that they experience. They also constantly talk about how is it completely de-energizing or de-motivating them. Many of them say that, they feel inspired to see the way I balance my work-life. It used to surprise me earlier, but now I understand what they are talking about. I feel, I am clear on my priorities and that just helps me plan my work better, or even say ‘no’ to work that doesn’t interest me. Just by doing this I save enough time for activities that energize me and my family. I feel there are three main aspects at the root of the work-life balance, if you are able to work around these, then work-life balance doesn’t look like an herculean task anymore.

1. What is your long term Goal?

Is there something you aspire to do in the future, some dream that you want to come true? If you haven’t thought of this, then “take a break” to find this purpose. You may go away to a forest, or do some social work, Vipassana or just take a long nap. In Native American Shaman cultures, there is a process that a teenager had to go through, this process was a Visioning challenge. Where the teenager entered a forest and lived there for two or more days all by himself, only on his means, it is said that when he returned, he was transformed and knew what he wanted from life. Similarly in early India the Gurukul provided guidance to the path, which became your Dharma.

2. Is your Goal connected to what you are currently doing?

The connection may be direct or indirect. For e.g: Currently you may be doing a job to earn money, which will help you bring the dream to reality. Or, you might be already working towards the dream. The point here is, how aware are you of your present being related to your Goal or Dream?

If it is not, then you might be facing what I call as “Incongruloma” this word is not in the dictionary, so I will explain. Incongruloma is a confused state of being, where you are not sure, why you are doing, what you are doing? Also the confusion seems to continue to increase like cancer. In this state it seems like things in our life are being driven by someone else and we have no control over our own lives. Mind you this is a illusionary stage and it is easy to get out of it, if you learn to “take a break”or “take a chill pill”. Learn to say “No” to something that is not worth your time and “just stay”.

3. Create a list of things that are important in your life and that make you happy. Both at work place and in your life otherwise. Relive the moments and relish the emotion that you feel in your body. As you will sit quietly relishing all the moments that have given you happiness you will experience “Cheriscity“. Cheriscity is happy electric pulsation through your body, you won’t find this word in the dictionary again. Once you know the feeling of Cheriscity, all you have to do is create more and more of it for yourself and others.

When you follow the above three guidelines, you will observe that your balance will show in your work-life. It is the inner imbalance that makes us feel that our work and life is imbalanced and most of the time there is someone else to blame for it. It could be either our organisation, or our boss, if nothing else, we end up blaming our parents and our government.

We find our balance when we know what is it that we are looking for? It then comes naturally to move in the direction that takes us away from the rat race, which causes “Incongruloma” to finding spaces that create “Cheriscity”.

Image Courtesy: http://www.careerattraction.com/finding-balance-clock-can-improve-career/