Learn to love your crisis

On being fearless

On Fear and Faith

Are you flowing with Life or are you fighting it?

Understanding Fearlessness

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Don’t fear uncertainty, embrace it!

Faith and Fear cannot co-exist!

Aye Zindagi, Gale Lagaa Le…

Don’t resist Life – be ready and willing to flow with it!  

Gauri Shinde’s new film Dear Zindagi (Alia Bhatt and Shah Rukh Khan) has suddenly revived interest in the Ilayaraaja classic “Aye Zindagi, Gale Laga Le”   from Sadma (1983, Suresh Wadkar; Balu Mahendra, Kamal Haasan, Sri Devi). I am yet to see Shinde’s film, but I spent much of the weekend listening to the original song by Wadkar (the new version is sung by Arijit Singh); I simply love Gulzar saab’s lyrics…the opening line means…“Come, embrace me Life; don’t I embrace all the pain that you send my way…?”

As I write this blogpost, I remain immersed in the spiritual essence of this song…it teaches us to accept the Life we have. But unfortunately, because of our social conditioning, we don’t learn this simple lesson early enough. We live much of our Life steeped in insecurity, resisting pain, asking why, why me, and so we suffer!

I can relate to this conditioning from my own experience. To be sure, I too felt insecure when I first came face to face, nine years ago, with the reality that we were insolvent and our Firm was bankrupt (read more in my Book Fall Like A Rose Petal ). Of course, I was devastated by the gravity of our crisis and was very, very scared of where we would end up in Life. But resisting the insecurity, wishing that things were different, only made me suffer. And in my suffering I could not focus. I was always unhappy. When you don’t focus or are unhappy, how can you function? How can you think of even attempting to solve your problems? While I could make sense of the futility of my suffering, I didn’t know where to start or what to do. What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

My daily practice of mouna (silence periods) helped me understand that all Life is impermanent, that pain is inevitable, and if we choose to embrace the Life we have, then we can completely avoid the suffering. I came to realize that Life really is an “adventure”, a “deep dive”, a “bunjee jump” into the unknown. Insecurity, pain and impermanence, I discovered, are the very weaves that make up the fabric of Life. Over time, I awakened to the truth that you can’t ever “fix” your Life, you can only flow with it, and allow Life to repair and reinvent on its own.

When I started seeing Life from this new perspective, I saw that each day threw up a fresh episode of “adventure” – a legal twist here, an irate creditor who had lost patience with our situation there, bills to be paid for essential services like electricity and telephones when there was no money to even buy groceries, a health situation to be urgently addressed; yet each time we thought it was all over, help, a.k.a miracles, arrived from unexpected quarters. No day, as Vaani and I have experienced, has been the same. Honestly, not all the stuff that comes our way on a daily basis, however new or fresh it is, is appetizing. But however much we feel spent at the end of each day, we wake up revived the next day. And take that day’s “adventure” head-on. This is how we have been living, in fact thriving, this past decade. In this time, it has become clear to me that Life has all along been, and will continue to be incredible, inscrutable and, therefore, insecure. Clearly, Vaani and I don’t have that sense of security that a steady income can provide, yet when we stopped feeling insecure about it, and let go, and let Life take over, things have happened on their own. We have learnt that our duty is to make our daily efforts and let the results take care of themselves. Even so, we don’t deserve, nor do we claim, any credit for the way we have learnt to live our Life. Why would anyone want a crisis, and as in our case, a prolonged state of cashlessness and worklessness? We simply chose to accept the Life we got and we have.

This numbing phase of our Life has taught us to live with insecurity. There are days, several times in a month, when we really don’t know what will happen from an income or business point of view.  But we know fully well that we will be taken care of. Maybe this is what they call faith. Not in an external God. But in Life itself – that if you have been created and you are in whatever situation you are placed in, you will be cared for, provided for and looked after. Maybe this is what Gulzar saab’s lyrics, with the song’s revival, are trying to remind us; that always be ready and willing to flow with Life! So, Aye Zindagi, Gale Lagaa Le…!

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Happiness is a decision

We want to be happy but we fight shy of deciding to be happy!

A lady walked up to me at The Bliss Catchers event I was hosting last evening and said, “Being happy is a lot of hard work. Just thinking of how much it takes to be happy sometimes unnerves you.”

I politely disagreed and explained to her that being happy is not hard work but requires hard decision-making. Because we are not ready to make those hard decisions or those important choices, we stay pining for happiness while it is pretty much within our reach – available 24×7 and it’s free!

First, to be happy we must choose between focusing on what we have and what we don’t have. As long as we focus on what we don’t have, we will never be happy. Another reason for our unhappiness is that we don’t practice detachment. When we are aware and conscious of the reality that we came with nothing and will go with nothing, we will be detached from whatever we gain or lose in this lifetime__money, relationships, material things and even opinions, either our own or of others. From detachment comes happiness. The third reason why we find happiness elusive is that we tend to give too much importance to fear. We fear the unknown future, we fear loss, we fear death and we fear leaving unfinished business on this planet. The way to deal with this fear is to know death is inevitable; when we are dead, and gone, we will not even know we are dead. So, why fear something that we will never know? Also, why grieve now for a state that is yet to arrive?

To be happy, you must just focus on what is, let go and stop fearing, among other things, death. These are simple choices that you can make. Staying with these choices can guarantee you a lifetime of happiness.

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Surrendering to Life means dropping debilitating feelings and being free

Going with the flow will deliver you to where you really ought to be.

Last night’s Super Moon, brought back haunting memories from some years ago. We had no money. The situation at home was so bleak, we were out of groceries. And just that evening our lawyer had called us to say that an order that had been issued by the court to seize all our movable assets and auction them, would be executed the next day. (PS: We are going through a bankruptcy; and to know more read Fall Like A Rose Petal and watch Rise In Love.) There were only two ways in which to prevent the court order from being executed. Pay the bailiff from the court money as a bribe or settle with the complainant so that they would not press the execution of the court’s order. I was very unsure of how we were to deal with this Catch 22 situation. We would never pay a bribe, but even if we had to, we had no money. So, in such a cashless situation, how were we to settle the complainant? Unable to sleep, I got out of bed around 11.30 PM and I stepped up to the balcony. I looked up at the full moon. It was a magical night – Chennai’s hot summer breeze blew in from the Bay of Bengal, the bamboo trees in the neighbor’s backyard rustled rhythmically, and the moon shone in all glory. I lifted my hands apart, part in prayer, part in invocation, and howled, in the dead of the night, looking up at the moon, “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what to do, I surrender.” Almost instantaneously my stress dissolved, the fear that was gnawing at me from within – on what would happen when the bailiff arrived – just vanished. I went back into my bedroom and slept through the night – soundly, like a baby.

The next morning, the bailiff came at the appointed hour. We offered him a glass of buttermilk that he accepted. In the time that he took to drink it, I told him our story. We offered to comply with his process seamlessly. He heard us out. Then he looked at me and Vaani and said, “Look Sir, you and Madam look genuine to me. Don’t worry about this order. I will take care of it.” So, saying, he just got up and went away. I have not seen him since that day.

I am not sure what the bailiff did or why he did what he did. All I know is that I surrendered to a Higher Energy. So I believe my family and I have been taken care of and provided for. This has not happened to us just this one time. It has happened again, and again, and again, every single time that we have surrendered.

Whether you like it or not, whether you ask for it or not, at some time or the other, in some unique, unfathomable way, Life will bring you to a state when you will awaken to the truth that your Life is not in your control. At such times, the best response is to simply surrender to Life. Let whatever must happen, happen. Because, whatever is to happen will anyway happen!

But the normal human response is anger, frustration, depression, fear, insecurity, anxiety, worry and grief. There’s no point suppressing these feelings. They will naturally arise in you. Allow those feelings to come. Feel each of them and ask yourself if they can help you deal with your Life situation any better. If they can, persist with them. Let’s say, someone’s dying of cancer. How can any of these feelings help cure the cancer? Or prevent that person from dying? Or let’s say you have been let down in a relationship. How can these feelings help you cope any better? When you sit calmly and analyze your Life situation – any situation which cannot be solved at a human level; and there are many of them – you will understand that going with Life’s flow, and the grand Cosmic Design, the Master Plan, is the only intelligent option you have. So, logically, there’s no point persisting with these debilitating emotions. Surrendering to Life really means dropping these feelings and being free!

I have come to believe that not knowing what to do in Life is an opportunity to understand, appreciate and live Life better. It is a humbling experience. Our education and intellect make us believe that we are in control, that we are achieving this and that, we are creating assets and raising families, that we have everything planned out and mapped out in our lives. But when a Life situation strikes, and pushes you into a corner, you realize that you were never in control then – or now. It is only through this awakening that you understand the value of surrendering to Life and going with its flow.

So, if you are in a place in Life when you don’t know what to do about someone or some situation, go with wherever your Life is taking you. Don’t resist. Don’t fear. Don’t agonize. Go with the flow, because, always, you will arrive where you eventually need to be and that’s where you will be peaceful and happy! 

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