Man of Grit

I was wrong. My idea of a school principal was a gentleman or a lady who would be running the school from an office. This principal actually spends 10% of his time in the office and the remaining with students and teachers. I have heard that he even tends to his school children when they are ready to take the bus home.

As a parent I got to attend a congregation convened by this principal. He was simply amazing. A very humble man, around 55 years of accolades won from different institutions and eager to listen to the problems faced by parents and their child wards. With a smile on his face, he consoled all of us and said that all concerns will be addressed. In fact, he also mentioned that he is going to fine a parent if he/she does not have a grievance or a suggestion.

I really felt obliged to this man who takes care of my kids and thousands of others in the right spirit. He puts others in perspective before his viewpoints. We normally don’t come across such committed people. It’s good to know that such people do exist. I’m not saying that others are not real, but there is a certain amount of weasel-ness in many people that you come across. And most of the minds are busy listening to their own agendas every day.

I must admit that I’m also not fully committed at this point of time, as I have other errands to take care of. But people like these principal reminds me of my lofty dreams and a hope that sustains by knowing that a life lived for others is the life that’s worth living. Wish I could dissolve all my problems and walk on the path that I have dreamed of, simply.

Maybe in the near future.

Regards,

Guru30

Don't mess with a missionary man

‘Don’t mess with a missionary man’. That was the line from the 80’s song by Eurythmics. It rings true. If you ever find someone on a mission, don’t stop him. In fact, if his faith is strong, you won’t be able to. If you haven’t got anything for which you can put your life on line, then this life ain’t worth living. Think about it. It may be global peace, or it may be helping children or whatever that prompts your values.

There must be at least one thing for which you are game. Everything else you may be able to compromise but just for this one you are solid as a rock. Because it means the most to you and as a matter of fact that is what you breath for. Never mind if you have to take a detour for a while. Look forward to coming back to your normal self soon.

This very faith will carry you over the rafts of pain that you have learned to endure. Note that I mean faith not belief. A belief can be false, as it arises out of thoughts. A faith is more like a calling and can’t go wrong. The difference is simple. For example, a suicide fighter works on belief not faith, whereas all moral goodness are signs of faith. Learn to clearly distinguish between the two.

Your faith will be put to test in this journey of life. If you excel, then it’s a life would worth lived, else you have a mundane life. To find out your true cause, give it ample amount of time. Then go for it. Nothing should stop you. There may be multiple incidents in your life, when your faith is put to test. Do not succumb to temptations. Get on with it.

Wish you all the best.

Guru30

And one for the road

Consciousness is one and it is unique. If you ask me a question, know that you are answering it yourself. We have goals, dreams of the future. But these are nothing but signposts. They exist only in the mind. And that too in the egoistic mind, mind you. For the ego it is very essential to be in a problem solving mode. But the truth is there are no problems to be solved.

I don’t mean that we should just be a witness. We must try to do what we love to do, without inhibiting ourselves. If we meet a murderer, we should definitely extol the virtue of non-violence to him, because he lives in ignorance. At the same time, preaching non-violence without getting ready for a fight is the way of the cowardly. Fight is to uphold the dharma, or the way.

What do you think is the purpose of life? There is none. It’s a leela or a play, in other words. Consciousness does not know of the past or the future. For it, only this moment matters. And we should do well in every single moment knowing that it is a gift. Actions happen. The doer is not of significance. A sand dune on a desert does not need anyone, but if anyone was to see its beauty it would be enthralling.

There are different levels of awareness. Matter at the surface, dig deeper, and you find energy, dig still further and you find consciousness, which is essentially single. The cosmic consciousness is one like the ocean and we are all the waves. Some of us rise up and some ebb, but we all are a part of the same ocean. So be a wave like in high tide and then exit gracefully when death happens to us.

Don’t save it for the big day. Live it now.

To your sojourn on this dreamy blue planet …

Guru30

Beyond the law of attraction

Some people think that having desires is not good. That it is the root cause of all evil. Well, that is not true. Desires help us to look forward to something. We keep moving on and on because of this, but too much of it, can lead us astray. Now here is the bottom line:- Desire is not bad but attachment to desires is bad. Let me explain that in a bit.

When we are not ready to accept the scenario of desires not manifesting that is the time we get most attached to it. Don’t! Let it go. Focus attention on other desires. One reason this could have happened is too many desires or focus having been lost. In short, that desire does not have enough force. Force is another word for effort. So now here’s the truth.

No desire will be fulfilled without effort. If you think that you imagine something and then the universe will go about pushing you in that direction, you are right. But remember, you have to do your part. That rock out there is not just going if you wish to, unless you are telepathic. In our place we have a saying: 50% our effort and 50% God’s. I couldn’t have said it in a better way.

So my humble submission to you is that do believe that there are magical forces which push us in a particular direction or creates pathways for us, but that does not mean that we sit with folded hands. Go out and receive that push and do whatever is asked of you to make that desire come true. There are no free lunches. Life is not like the game of fishing, it’s more like basketball.

You have to put in that extra effort, if you really want to make that desire happen.

Cheers,

Guru30

May it always pour

I never thought rains would be so beautiful. Today I got drenched in it from head to toe. It’s different from taking a bath. The main difference being that I had my clothes on. The smell of the earth was tickling my nose buds. Reminded me of my childhood times when I would run into the rains the first time it started pouring. Jubilant I used to be, and the rain song ringing in my thorax.

Some people think that carrying an umbrella is too much of an inconvenience. Roads overflowing with water, trains getting delayed and cars stopping in the midst of nowhere are common scenes in the rainy season. Yeah, but look at the positive side. There is nothing better than a getaway with your family in some remote island where it rains forever. Imagine a beach or the wild mountains in rain. The trees and the branches swaying in the rainy wind, as if they are joyous beyond reason and are singing a song thanking heavens for sending the rains.

We might also like to concede that in many of the countries rains are essential for their economic development. I mean farmers. They depend on the rains for a bumper crop. Right timing and right quantity can make the difference. I still like to believe that rains are sent by Gods from heaven. Because the earth follows the heaven and the heaven follows the Tao.

Water of love, If I may put it like that. I hear some people perform sacrifices or chants to invoke the rain gods. Although we have scientific explanations for the rain, fables always catch our wonder. I don’t see any reason why we can’t be like children again reminiscing grandmas tales of ghosts and goblins. Oh! I forgot – we are all grownups, right. Kids get carried away, not us big guys and gals.

Although I’m also in the elderly club, I must admit that I haven’t seen anything more beautiful than a raindrop on a rose’s face.

May it always pour …

Guru30

Happy 24 by 7

It's raining outside. A cup of hot tea in ginger flavor resting between my lips - feels like groundhog day, almost. As the evening sun bids sayonara to all, for some, the late night shift has just started. Really wonder how they keep themselves awake in the night. I remember the quote that, the heights achieved by men are for toiling in the night when others were sleeping. Can't remember who said it.

Lucky enough to see today's sunset. Is there something special about this moment? My heart says yes, while my brain disagrees. I guess the heart is right, always. Some moments are more special than others. Like George Orwell said in his classic Animal Farm – All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. That's really twisted – isn't it?

Sometimes I like to get away from all this daily rush into nature. Fortunate enough to get the view of mountains from my home; they all get covered by the clouds especially in the rains. I'm back to my cup of tea, when a thought streaks through my mind. Maybe I'll capture this in photographs. Wish there was a machine to capture my feelings of the moment.

3-D TV some say. But when will we have 3-D experience capturing gizmos. And transfer the same feeling to others, maybe over the internet – the next question would be bandwidth. Once a techie, always a techie, I guess. But, hey! Did I miss something? Yes I did. To listen to my hearts songs, lost in the humdrum of activities.

I made a promise to myself today – will not squander time where my heart contracts. I know I can feel it – God's silent whisper – beckoning me – wish I could melt into – just like that.

Wishes

Guru30

Being Human

Do not live the life of a sheep. There is a lion inside you. Awaken it. A lion is very powerful, yet it does not throw its weight around. It only hunts when it's hungry. It likes the company of other lions. The lion is not out there to prove something. It does not complain, goes about its ways inconspicuously and eats only as much as is required to douse its hunger.

There is a lot that we can learn from a lion or for that matter, from any animal or bird. They are all situated in themselves. Do they have a concept of time? Do they know what technology is? Do they get addicted to it? Do they enjoy sadism? Do they have a concept of money? Are they bothered about how much a house on the west side costs or what markets are going to be like tomorrow?

We have made our lives complicated. So much so that we have lost touch with the lion inside us. A true impeccable person does not get sidetracked in a confusing world. He lives in the moment, reminding himself that every moment well lived is a treasure in itself. Stress does not get to him, neither do other maladies. He knows the meaning of this great mystery called life.

Technology has a strange hue to it. It has accelerated the pace of development depending on what we really mean by this word. Is building a tall tower or bridges real progress? Is socializing online as compared to the real thing better? Technology sure has made some things better. But I have a feeling that we are becoming more cerebral creatures than we ought to be.

I'm for technology, but not at the cost of the dignity of being a human. And it's high time we regain what is truly ours – the gift of being human.

Dedicated to my 6.5 billion friends all over the globe …

Guru30

Looking up at the Cloud

Cloud computing may be an abused word, but it truly is worth all the hype that surrounds it. Let me explain to you why it makes sense. The first and foremost is the implementation. The data is stored on the cloud, which means that the data is external. You really don't know where it is stored and need not be worried about this aspect, because the data is guaranteed to be there. Although the uptime cannot be 100%, it's pretty close. Data is synonymous with thoughts. An average human thinks at least 40,000 thoughts in a day. These are not wasted, but stored as Akashic (Sky) records. Today we don't know how the brain accesses this information. But somehow we are connected to this database, which is online always.

The second area of concern is the security. On a public cloud, the data is quite secure, but hackers can percolate in this setup, as we know from the recent attacks on Sony. We have been having clouds like gmail, yahoo mail etc. which have not been compromised. For data that needs regulation or compliance, a private cloud is the solution. For other low priority applications, they can very well be shifted to a public cloud. CRM, Payroll are some of the applications which match this requirement. A private cloud gives a sense of ownership and a public cloud a shared approach. For many of the users a hybrid cloud presents the best solution. Most of the thoughts that happen to us are readable by everyone (and I don't just mean human brains) but connections like a prayer happen over an encrypted line. In this context this is synonymous to public and private cloud.

Till now I have been talking mainly about SaaS. (Software as a service) There are many other kinds of services. One of them is IaaS. (Infrastructure as a service) In this typically, we get the fine tuning control of the infrastructure where our applications and data are hosted. To make efficient use of our information we have to virtualize it. This simply means using CPU and Storage effectively to their fullest. To live our life to the fullest, we need to balance the following aspects: Physical, Emotional, Social and Spiritual. A conscious approach to this is needed which will in turn achieve virtualization. Thoughts can be controlled totally by us. When that is done we become aware, like conscious adhering to standards like green.

For those of you who have sunken costs into existing applications, the cloud may seem a formidable solution. Do not worry. Take it as it comes. If you really feel that some aspects of the cloud can be put to use, go ahead, and give it a shot. But remember, there may be quacks, who would, want you to, part with your hard earned money. So read the prospectus carefully before you sign on that dotted line.

May it rain forever …

Guru30

All roads lead to the same destination

People ask me where is God? My reply to that is one word – everywhere. There is not an iota of place in the universe where he is naught. He is pure consciousness or better yet, awareness. He pervades in the entire expanse of the universe. And what we perceive as matter is nothing but 1% of his glory. The remaining 99% is not known.

In an object oriented language there is a concept of members and attributes. This is equivalent to the Yang and the Yin that is responsible for all causation. The female factor is easier to perceive than the male. As we can perceive sunlight without knowing much about the Sun, in the same way, the properties can be perceived by us without knowing their source.

God is not somebody who is beyond sense perceptions. Know that for every single moment, we are in communion with God. Knowingly or Unknowingly, we receive and transmit thoughts. Thoughts translate into action. Action when awake is executed by our senses. If we learn to see the mighty God everywhere, we will never be at a loss. – of anything.

And this exactly is the secret. There is no other secret that we need to know. We really need not meditate for better perception or perform yagnas to please God. God is not an external entity. He is embedded within each one of us. We are all his sparks. Like gold that glitters in any form, we are also part and parcel of this force. There is no one special favorite for God. We are all created equally. Also, his love is unconditional.

You don't have to ask God for his blessings. You are already blessed.

Best Wishes

Guru30