Clarity comes with a stand

Clarity comes with a stand, and with clarity you can take a stand. But it’s so important to have clarity in life without which our existence seems mundane and mechanical. What you do is not important, not even how you do but how much you are clear about it matters. Wishing you clarity and contentment for year 2010
It’s often debated what comes first clarity or stand but they both follow each other consecutively whichever you start with. But clarity in our lives is such an important aspect to keep us alive. Otherwise we are just clones doing whatever is prevalent around us or move like a herd. Always choosing whats abundant, making safe choices, following the crowd and we start losing our selves.
We keep ourselves indulged in various things or time to time shift our indulgence as it brings clarity to the fact that we live, we are alive and ultimately that’s what matters. Whether god exists, this world has any meaning, country, system, society, government, friends and relatives; all of this only has a meaning if we are alive. If you notice right from eating ice cream to copulating, the only reason we like to remain active physically, which eventually makes us mentally active, is feel alive even if it’s just a fleeting reminder of our being. There is a constant repetition in our activities as they begin as actions but turn into activities which ultimately makes us forget our self again. Now our primacy is lost. We desperately seek to establish our existence but mostly the attempt is uselessly external. It’s like seeking your family in every house in the city except your own. That is why we seek acknowledgement from others around of who we are and what we do. Recognition of our being alive.
A friend says he doesn’t believe in god, there is one who says I only believe in nature as god or there are followers of scientology these days. Now anyone who is trying to establish a fact by mentioning whether they believe or do not believe is actually spiritual. As the fact remains they are still acknowledging their existence, it’s the `I’ they are making claims about. No one denies that `I’ do not exist, meaning everyone accepts the presence & persistence of the self. No such statements or convictions would ve any meaning without the backing of an `I’.
It still remains important that you have at least some stand and you are firm about it. As it’s the law of nature that if you get firm about anything with no fickle mindedness it leads you to clarity. It’s like only if you are standing on an extreme end, you have a probability to reach the other extreme. Unfortunately this kind of dedication to one’s belief is rare to find. You only come across people forgetting their statements or being casual about their words, changing their stand as per the situation or circumstance, fretting over petty issues. Only those who neglect or don’t have principles of any kind reach such degraded levels.
Even if someone says that I don’t take anything seriously or don’t care about anything or they are casual about everything. They can get clarity too if and only if this remains their motto everywhere, but the moment there is subject of their interest or things they crave for, they get serious and involved, hence lose.
May I request you to not just put this whole beautiful term you have been granted in constant indulgence in activities but also seek what you actually need ease, clarity, confidence, knowledge, contentment, peace, affection, belongingness. It’s within you only if you just cease this restlessness and give your self some time. Just sit idle and be with your self for a while everyday and then you will treat others the way you expect to be treated.
With this I bid good bye to 2009, another year in my quest to establish me in my `self’ and hope to focus more in 2010. Wishing you clarity, peace and contentment for 2010.
- VA

Ultimate fear

We must prioritize to address our ultimate fear death. How it affects our daily life and our complete being. It has the most vital role to play as its the inevitable part of all of our lives. Accept it, face it, understand it to know life.
Everyone knows that our ultimate fear is death and hence we do everything to evade the acknowledgement. But it still reveals itself in some form or the other all the time. The gradual decay and fade of everything. Everything moving towards nothing or ending every moment. We try to capture moments or instances from our lives which make us feel lively.
Its a genuine lust in each being for life and nobody wants to give it up. We cant even give it up actually. Life is eternal but the ignorance of this fact drives us to do all the trivial and useless things wasting our precious time. None of us has experienced death but lot of near death experiences probably and heard/seen death of known people. What happens after death or with death? If only we d try to find it while we are still alive.
There are many things that point towards this inevitable fact of life for instance boredom or lull of any kind, awkward silence amongst people, lack of anything to look upto, halt after reaching a destination, void after fulfilling an ambition we strive hard and put at stake everything for. It has become such a common practice to compromise on everything from emotions, values, ethics, humanitarian behavior just to get to a single trivial point or moment. Unfortunately that too doesn’t last just like our death.

We avoid pain, discomfort, unfavorable situations, people we are uncomfortable with to extreme extents and yet the disparity strikes us putting in such conditions again and again. Making us realize that you cant make everything okay from outside. Nature shows us both sides constantly liveliness and void. So that we start focusing towards something that we can never lose how hard we try and stop focusing towards things & moments that can never last.
At least for some minutes in a day we should dedicate to life. Just life, simply life, as it is without any changes, without any deficiencies and without any gains. Life which is complete in itself and flowing in/around us, enveloping us all the time.

We celebrate occasions and festivals following certain ways, traditions and rules. As on the outside we associate life with them. We live in families and societies, build relations and again socialize, join/gather in groups, clubs, organizations, unions, alliances, societies, etc. Its not like everyone is blind but ignorance is bliss momentarily. The facts I am throwing light towards don’t often leave one with a pleasant or comfortable feeling or aftermath.

But again only to the point where you just read or ponder or contemplate over it. Once you start dwelling towards life in its true and pure form. When you choose to face it hard on the face and not ignore it. You are ultimately showered with light of knowledge thats stays as its always been within you. Only by remembering for few moments everyday or after every few hours or best as often as you can, that everything is heading towards death but life always stays. We have to stop grabbing what wont last and start focusing towards what envelopes us all the time. Fear, greed, lust, anger, pride, hate, aversion, attachment and other such lowly as well as degraded traits/attributes we find commonly associated with human life only because we fear death.

Death is merely physical and it only ends whats physical. It breaks our false association from everything that is equally perishable as our own body. Every single moment that passes by is dead and the moments yet to come still uncertain/unpredictable. The present moment is where death can never be and life always is. Whatever we contribute doesn’t stay beyond a point and even things we mentally try to establish do fade away with time but this realization of life, which I refer to as the real Self. This realization or at least the acceptance stays.

How can anything be valuable if you know it doesn’t have any age or its not gonna be with you. Isn’t the time spent on any such pursuit ultimately a waste? At a particular point it might seem valuable but such values that won’t last long enough. Even events we consider contributing to nations or society for may be a decade or few but the nature’s cycle changes everything.

Accept it and you ll know life or die like a million cells in our body everyday. Death is not be feared but to be accepted, known and understood. Its more important than anything we are killing/dying for everyday.