Writing Feedback / Essay about "What is work?" [5]

when do our efforts succeed and when do they not.

a required exertion is necessary for us to consider anything as work, we may enjoy it too, and also, feel some necessity to bring about the outcome.

but when we are surrounded by the implements we will use, through which we will apply our effort, our mind at first stands aside and regards the proposed action.

just as the instruments and implements we will use, we have a measure of the skill we will bring, and it is to this that we become most committed in the action.

so, our mind has registered a plan, a path our action will follow, also, what we will look to avoid, and in recognizing the earliest indications of this negative effect lies a measure of our skill. Actually a large component of our skill lies in avoiding the unwanted from happening, which can perhaps happen in many ways.

an alertness to that occupies a large part of our mind and, it focuses on the emerging positive features as we apply our effort. like making our way on a less visible path through a forest when we have a sense of the direction, we will look out for danger, sometimes we will take a risk, but we are also looking for signs of other trails joining with ours, and always a glimpse through the space between branches for some familiar sighting.

when plunging through a forest the goal is to get out to the other side, out of the confinement of the trees, into the open. This paradigm is so similar to when, say, we are developing a software program in the workplace. Our manager who assigned us the task brings to us the sense of the trees, we have little choice to stay out, for that would enclose us within other trees, his disapproval becoming definitely in the nature of the trees - so we press on.

we are often asked to do things we feel ourselves uncertain of accomplishing, but through various coercions accept. we plunge in and almost from the start we have a sense of dependence on our manager, or a support group, both taking away from our self confidence. its not often easy to ignore these avenues and do the job on our own, because of time constraints.

this is the situation we may most often find ourselves in and we now address the question - how can we succeed best. is there a prescription to success, the right attitude, the right mix of self effort and selective guidance. can this picture be examined as though, from the outside.

everything considered, ofcourse our choice would be to succeed on our own, and it is not for the recognition from others but from ourselves, of the innate power within us. this sense of satisfaction is of utmost importance, to see our own evolving capability, our inner growth.

therefore to begin with we will address the problem by ourself, and in that approach lies largely the outcome. if we have in some corner of our mind the possibilities of easier solutions, of seeking out assistance or passing on some of the difficult parts of the problem, its just so much less we will commit to achieving it on our own.

what we fear is to fail. the outcome of failing. why can we not spend some time considering the fallout of that. the worst of that is being pulled down in so many ways. but apart from it becoming a risk if others depend on your holding out, the pain of coming down in others eyes contributes to awakening this fear of failing. but when do we fail. you were assigned one part of the work, but the whole project collapsed, what could you achieve with your own part.

so its important to consider the scope of your effort and know that there are other parts tied to it, and their movement is going to affect yours. that's a consideration to keep in the back of your mind - but you can single out the essential component of your work, the part of the total effort which is just yours.

lets consider how it came to be yours. your manager recognized your special skill and in his judgement, the ones required for accomplishing that task. a little fairness was also involved, a correct measure of your function within the group, and importantly the opportunity to develop and grow out for you. these may have been the considerations in an assignment coming to you.

the part that meets most of your focus is the difficulty aspect where you find yourself asking, can you do it. and if you can, you will.

but, there is now an unescapable moment, an inevitable moment when you are going to look eye to eye with what you have to do, that is beyond your current experience. what has worked and what hasn't for this situation. there is definitely one moment of darkness when you don't know what is to be done. this you anticipated as the first sense of difficulty of this task.

again you may feel pulled to taking assistance or passing the job, but we've already considered those, and you have reached the core of the problem which is yours by assignment, and you feel the oppresive pull of defeat, which is just the direction you mentally follow, imagining the consequences of not accomplishing the required task. but if the time for doing isn't up, and you've just started, can there be anything else but to bring yourself and consider the actions from those already in your reportoire.

this is the moment of focus.

you've unravelled out from the task the most critical and as yet unattempted part of it and attempting to match yourself to it. you know you fall short in the first measure. there is more you do not know and less you are familiar with, and as you consider it in further detail even more complications begin to appear, and their attending risks add more to the improbability of their being overcome with whatever you have in your arsenal. something about it all is pressing you to flee.

at this time we can see its not our skills which will lead us. and this is a situation created in most general terms and will not only happen with everyone but with everybody almost everytime, and we are left considering something totally out of the specific needs of the job as being essential to accomplishing it.

so what is it, and if it isnt about any specific task in particular, it is some characteristic trait which comes into play everytime, and unconscious though we may be to it in ourself, it is responsible for our succeeding, whenever we do.

it appears as some staying power, at a level where difficulties are considered not in their specific form but become diffuse, and appear as a personal threat and try to subdue us. we have here a battle, a struggle that no one else can see. but that this does take place we may judge from the times we've found ourselves involved in some tussle, unconscious moments, mostly those between being visibly occupied with somethings.

when do we win these struggles, what is the probable outcome of these, and can we in any manner affect their outcome. we are definitely considering strengths of a personal character and asking how relevant is that in bringing about the outcome of the tasks we take up. we accept a challenge, we allow it to confront us, instead of denying it, or not processing the task at all, and accepting we are not ready for this.

Writing Feedback / persistence of external reality [4]

One of the the most troubling things is the persistence of external reality. We can go within and from that point of view we see that it might be that we, as we are, are totally tied to the reality outside. If we pass away this moment the next we will be around here, tied to the same. There is something created in the mix of things and other things, in which our presence is a part of its being as it is. We cannot go away from our reality. As we turn in our beds to make ourselves comfortable, we can turn things around to make them comfortable for now.

This nature of our external reality has a deep connection with us, its in the way it is, the sum total of it. Like a chain around our ankle we don't wish to acknowledge. The important question becomes not so much then of understanding in how many ways can we relate with this individual reality, but where does it really tie us. Where is it binding us. Maybe even why?

Like hitting a blank wall. The expression has force because that's as solid as a contact can be, and its blankness hits you in the mind, stupefyingly. Yet if this moment has truth for me, which we see every moment has for everyone, their unique truth, then its blankness is full of meaning and answers to my question. The wall doesn't go away ask however stupid a question I may.

It is a part of other things come together to define my external situation, but as I live around it, I am as much a reason for it, as others see it. I am the more mobile element of the picture, like the greenery that comes and goes with the season, or water. To another persons eye, I am all that, but this may not be the very ideal I wish for, so I see it is not my wish standing before me, but I hang around because its how I am inclined in the sum balance.

Writing Feedback / an essay on - How we evolve [4]

How would we be when we evolve, when we just move on in life ?

How may we describe ourselves in a state, where we might be happier than we are now?

Would it be something physical. That would be insufficient, since I know for certain I do not experience physically, as much as with my mind. I am likely to feel happier when some difficulties work themselves out, maybe just in the way I understand them, instead of something physically changing.

I recognize this as true for all, and yet we exert to improve our circumstances. We fear we might otherwise be deluding ourselves into accepting what we do not have, so the physical change is a necessary validation of a real change to our lives - whenever it happens. Like becoming rich!

But then it seems true that the physical change follows after a particular change in our way of our thinking. We may say we became rich after we learnt how to.

If we consider the evolution within our mind, the one which precedes any real change in our lives, we see we are often willing to disregard the actual physical change, as a new house and car, and taking up our newly discovered power of acqusition we wish to do more with it and explore it to it's fullest extent.

This acquisition of knowledge seems the real essence of our experiences. Though we express it as some substance, a different understanding of it could be to think of ourselves as intrinsically all-knowing and covered in a layer of ignorance, which is removed through experience and learning.

The difficulty we may have in accepting this paradigm is the statement about our all-knowing self. Because, we think, if something should exist in a space within, we can uncover it by some direct means, and we cannot imagine a more direct method to do this than the present one, of learning.

To try and answer the question, how would we evolve spiritually? What would be the nature of our experience in an evolved state?

It would not be, as darkness all around, a permanent state of lonliness, a suspended state. Instead, we would see more, would be able to see with an unobstructed view, because the seer is within us. The world would be there for us, our perceptions would exceed those we have now.

Lack of true knowledge of things 'is' the cause of our awareness of them. Awareness is the first step leading to an effort to understand, and experience, and finally the knowledge.

Writing Feedback / an altogether different way of understanding how we make observations. [40]

Another way of interpreting the same old idea.

Everything else is everything else
Yet there is me.

Do I really think or am "I" a speck in the endless light of thought

There is an altogether different way of understanding how we make observations.

Somebody is present with us and then departs. We could say they are still present, but some other things have changed. They are no longer visible. Their going away, even now in our minds, is slowly fading away. If two people were present at the departing, a week later they may recollect different amount of details. One could still say of the event as existing, but viewable by each to differing degrees.

I can try to regard this formless presence and realize, I am more aware of things which are present and I also believe I have no real connection with the person not present. We are both trapped by other things around us. But these things and their behaviour is independent of who we are, and I am able to stand away and reflect on them in my thoughts. So visiblity is some activity in the eye, brought up in some process. First, there is a mental relationship and the other manifestations come about subsequently, and I form a belief it will so happen. My mind accepts the manifestations of sounds, forms, substance, which by themselves have no meaning, but enforce in the mind a certain flow of events. The effect has been for me to think of the world outside as without its own purpose, and deny its direct relationship to my mind.

It is only in my thinking that I feel myself independent. My thoughts come to me from somewhere I am unaware of, but they make me aware of my existence. They make me feel the different ways I do about myself. It is not the words themselves but something preceding them, a power to make observations of very factual nature. This is what I see, or this is so, or I feel this. Its like reading some inner panel, very observational and all about myself - like an inner latent realm.

Writing Feedback / "See the sky" essay [3]

I see the sky - its vastness. Somewhere somehow it has come to be. I see the mountains, their vastness. The growing trees, the motion of things, somehow somewhere it has come to be. My seeing of them, my knowing of them - how, how and what is happening.

I see the sky - deep, endlessly deep.

I walked into this loving vault of nature.

I know this with certainty, that though the day seems so empty, so empty, something, something will happen later.

I just wait, I can only wait for some greater power to act for me. I know I want to feel in my mind the quickness of catching the idea that I may pursue and feel my mind stretch and grow.

All reality must be a manifestation - which is stupendous in its implication - the huge mountains, the green nature. Our purpose is to see through this manifestation - maya.

I feel blocked because my expectation is as if to see directly, and I am unable to.

Writing Feedback / essay on - why I write [17]

So, what do I want to do that is different with my writing?

Writing, to me, if you allow me to express myself philosophically again, are words which lie on the boundary of the physical and the power of thought. It's not some fixed line, for thought is never defined anyway, but may seek to answer the question, where does the thinking lie, at this time, on this subject.

I do not doubt that people write, to entertain, to engage others and that can be interesting. I want to write so that those who read me, can use it like a butcher uses his carving knife, to cut away the fat, the stuff that is not after all so vital and take away the real and meaningful.

More like a surgeon sometimes, I want to correct a disfigurement of thought, an idea that has un-necessarily grown into a diabolical and grotesque caricature of something originally sublime and natural - something in the way we could see things, but do not.

When you are done with a piece, consider it, for the truth in it. I try to convey meanings, unfamiliar and strange sometimes, in small steps; but keeping in mind the larger idea that I would like to lead you to. Then leave you alone with it, that you may reconstruct familiar things, with new rules, and decide do they enhance or diminish your understanding of life.

Here's how what I am trying to do, different from other motivational, self-help advice. Where that advice leads you with the promise of making you stronger, in many ways, my paradigm is, to unbefuddle. I take it, that's very important, else you would'nt have come this far. Please raise your questions, as you see things from where you stand. Knock down my hypothesis, you will earn my gratitude.

I mean it!

Writing Feedback / on sounds and meaning - an essay [4]

The question is - what is the position of words, spoken and read, in our inner realm. Why do they acquire a special significance, or even, how do they have the power to affect us more deeply than even the things we see, objects. All words are constructed with individual sounds but connect as though to our minds in a particular and special way, uncovering the dross.

All our learning, development of our minds has been through written or spoken words, so we could say the knowledge we prize in ourselves has so come about.

What is the significance of this, how does it come to be this way. Something very basic in our minds must have some similar constitution, which is not sound in itself, yet keeps our mind stabilized in some inner knowledge.

There are two ways in which words are real - as written and spoken. What they convey comes also from what precedes and follows them but the existence of written and spoken words is different from those which come to our mind with our ideas. These become a part of the real world, though spoken words are still less permanent than written ones.

What is the significance of sounds in general that surround us. We swim in them as a part of our atmosphere and some are definitely assuring depending on where we are. How disconcerting it would be if we were to hear only 'silence' on a crowded street.

Sounds happen and we attend to them, to first understand their context, what could this sound being there at all mean. Does it fit. I expect a person sitting next to me to create sounds, most likely words, but not like those that can come from vehicles, or an animal. I notice a certain alertness for this in myself, like creatures in the wild have for prey or danger. It has an instinctive quality and for that reason is on the surface.

Past this boundary we admit sounds into an inner sense, those we want to feel with greater sensitivity, as though mixing them with our own thoughts to understand them. A word, an idea or sentence is introduced into a living sea of our mind that works with an intelligence forming structures with this entrant. Sometimes it is happy to discover that it is outside its ability to make it a part of itself, and is still intrigued by it.

To identify a sound in a myriad of many, the mind sifts through its own structures, finding one which relates to the one holding our attention. Till that happens we exert at holding the mind in that state of awareness. We may also become aware at this time of other unresolved things on our mind.

We try to hold just the sound of this unfamiliar word, but seek something to make it easier to hold on to it with, a meaning, to strengthen our grasp. What if there is very little we find in our repertoire, anything similar, how would our mind behave in that situation.

We reach a deeper layer of purpose in our mind which determines our resolve to grasp this unfamiliar sound. We say to ourselves this has to be. If the meaning lay outside of us, it's almost as though we force the outside to let us have it, a need as though to expand our mind.