The Grapes were Sour...

I happened to revisit the story of the fox and the sour grapes, more than once in close succession, and each time I picked again a casual thread of reflection, till the vague thoughts of my mind gave way to something vivid.

A fox was hungry . She saw a bunch of grapes. She jumped to get them. She jumped again and again but could not get them. She went away saying that the grapes are sour.
The moral being- It is easy to despise what you cannot get.

We have been brought up thinking how wrong the fox is. The grapes need not really be sour after all. So wrong to scorn, to revile something.

But does it matter if the grapes were in fact sweet? It was really sour for the fox! Something that could not remove the hunger of the fox definitely left a sourness in its heart. The grapes were sour...

Well, if the fox did think so while going on its way, it definitely would have become easier for her to make peace with unfulfilled wishes and move on to new hopes.

Each Blessing has its Curse

Is not it true, that attached to each blessing is a curse?

For example, you might be blessed with beauty but can you be sure all the attention you get is real love? It could just be more of a desire to pluck, than to tend; leaving you with a wound to nurse. Many who are beautiful get cutting remarks and often feel hated for no reason they know of. Beauty is often cursed with undeserved hate and hurts.

Feeling love is a blessing but it often brings in possessiveness, insecurity and the likes which are horrible feelings and which make you wish you wouldn't have loved. It can gift you the worst heartache and the most terrible period called break up...Love is cursed with pain.

Talent is a blessing but cursed with loneliness. Highly talented people often don't find similar minds or understanding friends. They may find an aspect to themselves that compliments every different friend but there might not be a friend who could find a side which is able to understand or sync in to their complete self. They are cursed with loneliness in a crowd of friends.

Fame is a blessing but cursed with fake friends. People flock to those who are popular and claim them when fame knocks up to them. They may get praises and appreciation and are applauded, but they can never be sure the sources are true to them. The famed are cursed to a fake world.

You can add to this list and see the curse attached to each blessing. However, when plagued by the curses,you can  remind and console yourself with the knowing that "It is because I have/had a blessing" and so ignore the side effects or  downside. What is more, every curse can turn to a blessing...Pain can often be the best fuel to creativity, insights and higher wisdom.

On the other hand, if you don't have these blessings, you feel just a regular person with nothing much going for you; then look again! Quite possibly you have been blessed in life "with all that really matters"- such as good friends who stay by you through thick and thin, and perhaps even true love"!

Unlike the gods or angels in forever bliss, being human, we have the privilege of being able to experience various kinds of joy in innumerable aspects of what we call life. However, it comes with the promise of  being able to suffer just as much. But then, every suffering comes with the assurance of precious lessons, of a meaningful life. Just look closer......and deeper...

Life is an inseparable duality. Accepting both - 'so called' blessings and' so called' curses -with equanimity, is the only escape.....

Lighting a Candle

'Gloom' itself the night, to which I suddenly woke
Fearful the sounds that crept up close,
mingled with the thump of my very loud heart;
Which sang of a terror with a thundering force.

Wet went my palms with all that I feared
I trembled and cursed until thoughts cleared;
Wasn’t there a candle and match I could find?
But the dark ate at me as the distance sneered.

I stumbled through the distance but, did find my way
I did light the candle and it leapt bright and gay!;
that the shadows that threatened were now the scared
as they fled from the fear of the truth spreading ray!

With a candle I could see all for what it was
Now nothing could pretend to be something it was not;
The ghost at the window was just a hanging branch!
And the threat at every step was merely my thought

The light that I lit was 'sight' new to see
A strength to my heart, a guide to my feet.
Lighting a candle is all that it took,
to tick at the truth and cross the “could be”...

(Topic from Roy Durham...What does the light of one candle mean to you)

Rising above... On Track...

Recently, I saw the movie "Soundtrack", a remake, an inspiring story about a musician who loses the power of hearing and then makes even more amazing music than he ever did when he could hear....The philosophy that struck me most in this movie is “First accept your situation, and then discover another beauty to the world from this situation where you are” . It reminded me of what a friend said to me “zindagi jeeni hai, jaisi bhi hai”.That is, Life is to be lived however it is. You cannot choose to live only the good part” And when we live the bad part, accepting the situation it places us in,and work “with it ” that is when we discover that life has become more beautiful now, than it could have been had life been going the way it was before...

Each situation in life has a potential and the situation itself arises from our soul calling out, seeking to escape the dip it has set into. It calls out to the universe for an upheaval, something that would rouse it and liberate it from the accumulating dust of daily living. Of course “every situation can turn for good only when we make the effort to rise above it and not get washed away with it”. So don’t give up just yet, look around..the world may be changing.

How worse is your situation? The worst is you might be feeling lonely in the world. You might have been consistently abandoned always by people you depend on the most, ignored whenever you called in your need, left alone, but just check out your inner world after you accept that you are meant to depend on no one..that life intends for you to depend on yourself; you might realize that your inner strength has grown so strong that you don’t need anybody.. it couldn’t have surged out unless you experienced abandoning from every person you relied on ...Surged out because it owes you love and support.

Have you been the leaning sort by nature? Would you have ever discovered this power within you if you had found someone you could always lean on? Maybe you were meant to discover your inner strength and your trials were meant to lead you to your profound self. Just look inside you, your power might be surging and rising after each disappointment, a power that is self sufficient, a power that is complete in itself, a bliss, that needs no one to fulfill it.

For the institution of marriage to survive...

I read a story in the newspaper about a woman, an only child of a couple, who was married off, only to get killed by her husband in a matter of 10 months from the marriage! The parents had brought a car for the groom...in which she was driven by the husband..dead, to be dumped.

Such are the possible consequences of marriage but our society does so love the institution called marriage and pushes off their darlings to experiment with dangers...without any training..

Dont all parents, all married couples know that the opposite sex is very different and very difficult to understand. Dont they remember how they struggled to understand their spouses? Probably they think, theirs was a unique case but infact the issue is not in your spouses, the real issue is lack of awareness about basic differences in the opposite sex, and lack of skills to bridge the differences. Isn't it the reason why a person who divorces once and marries again ends up divorcing again..and again. If the woman likes to communicate, the man mostly prefers quiet. If the woman likes to correct, the man hates to listen. If the woman is romantic, the man is practical..It wouldn't be wrong to say men and women are basically incompatible. Left to themselves, to their own devices, each person tries to change these differences to similarities, getting frustrated and resentful in the process.

And also, due to these differences that are not understood as natural differences, judgements are often made of the character that makes each sex become disgustful of the other in the long run, killing the very soul of marriage. If only they had known what to expect and what not to expect from the other sex....It could prevent disgust and anger from destroying the marriage by building the base of understanding that comes from being informed. Understanding and training could have given the skill to deal with differences correctly to make the marriage functional.

If society does want the institution of marriage to survive, what is it doing about it? It takes only trained people to do its engineering, doctoring, and for all sorts of institutions, but why does it not bother to train people for its much loved and fundamental institution of marriage? Is the indifference because the people in the marital institution are not paid to be in it? But isnt the exceeding number of divorce cases, the disturbed kids, the abuse, the murders in marriage, big enough reasons for worry that make the society sit up and finally do something about it.

I believe that society would benefit itself by starting a compulsory subject at graduation level that is equivalent to "Premarital councelling". All courses should have this as a compulsory subject and even the non graduates should require a certificate course in it to get married.. The subject should help in learning skills that help interact aptly with the opposite sex in marriage. It should most importantly also include sessions that involve releasing each individual from the baggage and damages of their family and upbringing, their past relationships, to prevent carrying and projecting its ill effects into their marital relation. This is important because unknowingly we live the roles of our parents and react to our spouse with the prejudices towards the opposite sex learnt unconsciously as a result of our earlier interactions with them in earlier relationships or even the view projected through the media.

There are many skills about handling relationships that cant be learnt easily without some sort of guidance. Look at marriages and you will see that 90 % of the times, the skill couples invariably learn by themselves, to deal with the spouse, is to keep distance, and with each passing year the distance builds. If society does really want the marital institution to be healthy and survive in the long run, creating balanced individuals in its offsprings, it does require a compulsory course in developing skills for marriage. I really dont think optional pre marital councelling or councelling when issues crop up is sufficient. What society currently does is like giving the car to an untrained person and asking that it be driven in heavy traffic. Is it enough to give the driving suggestions when the person and car are damaged in an accident? How would it look condemning the issue of increasing accidents when no effort to change the scenario is thought out? Yes, I am in fact saying society has been stupid and highly callous in its attitude to its fundamental institution, and what worries me is how long it will choose to stay so..



(A related post by me "Informed Love" (http://jerlyt.blogspot.com/2009/12/informed-love.html)can be viewed by clicking the title of this post)

Picture these concepts

1. The other self-The earlier post titled two worlds showed how we all live in two worlds, the sleeping-the waking; the real-the imagined. In fact we are two. One self is the space and time bound being living the earthly existence(shown in green), the other is its twin self, the seeker, the one that is detached from time or space (in Black) and seeks the experience of being the absolute self. The black depicts the darkness symbolising that seeking God or the absolute self is like entering the darkness,or the dark night with its mystery and fear of the unknown. The absolute self is depicted as the fish which is the symbol of infinity. This experience of the absolute is the experience of light and the eyes are shown as closed for there is nothing more to be known, it is the state of "being" the all seeing...

2. Seven Heavens and the Horizon - In the second painting the yellow clouds are symbolic of the unseen worlds or seven heavens and the purple is the seen world. Many religions have the concept of Seven Heavens (and Seven Earths!) or "the many worlds of space and time" (both Abrahamic and Hindu religions). From this concept it is understood that there are unseen universes where 'form' is. Even beyond this is the state called "Nirvana" where there is no form.(This I believe is the state called the Divine Throne which is said to be in or above the seventh heaven in most Abrahamic religions). This is the one power that is coursing through the seen and unseen universes which I have depicted as a bird and its mount, the sustainer, the binding force, the overseer or maybe in one descriptive word the Horizon. The point where Earth and heavens can actually be seen as meeting...

Two Worlds

1. "The Think Sleep" was adapted from a photograph(from a photo collection of my brother which I often refer for inspiration) in which I liked the way the child seemed to be thinking in sleep. Sleep time is a world of its own, strange dreams, different lands, and often a place where the thoughts of the day are arranged and settled...all ready for the other world..the one that opens when the eyes do....
2. "The Play Universe" This is the Universe of Kids, where everything is larger, is different. The curtain may become the window to a world like the one "Alice" visited. There are fairies, there are dwarfs...

and all these are so much more fun when there is a like minded friend to travel the wonderland with... (This is a picture of my girl and her friend)

Colour Portraits I love doing faces. I love doing wrinkles too. It makes the face more fun to work on with lot of shading to do! The first colour portrait I did, I think was of my paternal grandmother and the medium was poster. That was during school. She turned out slighly dusky where she had been reasonably fair! But the wrinkles and eyes were perfect if I may say so myself. I could see her departed soul in those eyes...My mom decided it wont give her rest so I don't have it now. The next was at the wish of my much loved hostel warden during graduation, Dr Aruna Parihar, a poster colour portrait of her. But I rather liked the crayon coloured portrait of her better which I did as a parting gift for her. The next was a request for a portrait in oil and now this wasn't something I could mess up! So I learnt the basics of oil portrait for one month at a Kala Kendra and managed a good one! With regard to portrait in water, I have only the memory of a book by Milind Mullick (on water colour in general). But I have to say study of the way a medium works is necessary and I wish someday I will understand water colour better...