Who am I? - Part 5
Hello all,
Namaste! Hope all of you had a great week where you were able to guide your mind towards the exact things you want for your life. Last week we were discussing the tunnel called the 'Dark Night of the Soul', which is one of the toughest time any Soul may have to go through. The one thing that doesn't make sense even today for me is, why all these making jump through hoops, tough tests, life lessons and more for the Souls. Why the Divine has to make the Souls go through the trapeze of lifetimes and difficult situations. Why? Why we have to keep on learning and becoming more closer to Divine through all these experiences? Why, why, and why? Can't all the Souls be just as the divine and be wherever they want to be happy and content? Why 'Maya' (illusion?), lessons or experiences? The only answer as of now I can come up with is, 'it just is'. Nothing more or nothing less. It just 'is'.
The dark night of the Soul: Anyway back to the topic. So, for three to four years from 2013-2017, I had no idea what I was supposed to do for a career, should I even have a career, and what is this thing I am living called life? Nothing made any sense. Why I chose to take Biotechnology? Why I was not able to use my Biotech or what is even the point of all those years of studying and trying to make a career for my life?My Scientist persona was lying in pure shambles all around me. I used to be very passionate about laboratory work in my twenties and thirties. Now, even the thought of Biotechnology and the laboratory experiments involved, brought a flat line to my mind as in an ECG (Electrocardiogram machine), where the line goes flat when a person dies.
My career brought out a flat line. Basically, my career was a 'dead body'. Done! Finished! The End! Nothing made any sense. I came to the USA, in the first place to make something of my Biotechnology. The year I came here, 1999, the company Celera Corporation had started sequencing the human genome called the 'Human Genome Project'. I watched them with President Bill Clinton in 2000 in the White House Oval Office, unveiling the project and how they sequenced the project, sitting in my living room watching on the television. But I was nowhere near to a laboratory, company, or even a test-tube. Utterly pathetic!
Fast forward fifteen years, still I had not made anything out of Biotechnology. Just a bunch of breaks, low paying jobs, and a lot of frustrations and disappointments. There were times I had scolded myself for choosing Biotechnology in the first place. Anyway, it was 2014/15/16. Nothing was working. No number of resumes, phone calls, or approaching the recruiters. To make myself calm, I used to go for nature walks. That was the one thing, I used to do every day. I would go for one hour, with my own thoughts, looking at my life from every possible angle, turning situations on its head, how to make my Biotechnology work.
Mind as the obstruction: Even that didn't bring me any answers. Absolutely no answers. A bunch of confusing thoughts. Some days after thinking and analyzing so much my head would start to ache and hurt. Then I would stop for some time. Again after sometime I would come back to square one. This continued till late 2016. I would go for walks, think every scenario and analyze. See, the one major thing I was doing here was, I was not looking for answers outside, but within. Every sacred book, Master, or Sage asks to 'enquire within'. Only I have a very active mind, my inner voice was either feeble or fully masked.
So, as long as I was analyzing, thinking, and planning, my conscious mind was active, subconscious or the inner voice just ignored me. Total silence! Nothing, not a thing came to my mind. Then one day I realized, my mind was a bunch of noises, opinions, and attitudes. In between, I also used to feel frustrations, disappointments, and regrets. Totally within the 'dark night of ignorance'. Absolutely no light! It dawned on me finally, I have to make my 'mind' quiet, if the answers have to be shown. It was very tough. To quieten a loud mind is totally a leviathan task.
I have written about it in so many posts. How do you think I was able to write? Because I had to tackle it in my own life. I had to throw away all the junk I had collected in my own mind. The social, familal, scientific, and even the ancestral conditioning. Everything I had to start discarding. A totally tough place to be. Until now not being aware was a bliss. There is an English proverb- "Ignorance is bliss'. Yes, indeed, until one becomes aware.
Once a person becomes aware, they suddenly come to the realization of the enormous load one is carrying. Each one of us is carrying a sack full of boulders lugging it around everywhere, and not realizing why our life always feels so heavy. The heaviness is not really the life, but the notions, perspectives, and attitudes we carry around, lifetime after lifetime, every round accumulating more and more, in the form of anger, guilt, shame, fear, doubt, ego, pride, attitudes and more. In an energetic sense, each is a heavy boulder in our mind. But, as the mind is the outward manifestation of our heart, truly in our heart. We have already discussed all these lower vibrations.
When our mind is a prisoner to all these materialistic vibrations, how in the world can we ever really know what our heart/intuition/inner voice is saying? So, my next task was to start dropping one by one each of the load. But is it easy? No, never. We have lived half our life in these group attitudes, perspectives, and mentalities, most are very subconscious. How can we ever drop it? The one and the only way is to start meditation, quiet deliberation, and becoming totally aware of what we think.
We have to become totally aware of what we are thinking during our quiet moments. Until then as we would be in an 'autopilot' mode, we never truly are aware of the thoughts that keep on repeating in our mind. We must start becoming aware of that. When I started becoming aware, I realized, I did use to do some negative self-talk. The constant barrage of 'not so good career experiences' had brought my mind to a place of low self-value. It was enough for the mind to go through one or two experiences. Now, it had taken upon itself to keep me exactly where it thought I should be. So, the biggest critic was sitting within me criticizing every single step I was taking. I suddenly became aware as long as my mind is in that mode, I am not going to go anywhere. I would be stuck exactly at that place of 'no career' for eons to come.
We have discussed before, 'What we think, we become'. So, here my thoughts were, 'You don't have a career', or 'You really are not good enough to have a career'. So, even though my conscious mind was applauding for all the efforts I was putting, my sub-conscious was totally putting me down. I was not good enough. Now, remember. we have discussed before, the conscious mind is only 10-20%, while the major percent is the subconscious- 80-90%. So, here 90% my own mind, was totally at work, against me. Also, pay attention to the fact we discussed last time. The twelfth house of the Vedic astrological chart is our blind spot. Of. course the twelfth house is the subconscious. Total blind spot! I was being blindsided by my own mind! Hahaha! Here, I am trying my level best to get a career, and my mind was working very much against me.
Making the mind our cheerleader: So, the first thing I had to do, make my mind, my friend. It was indeed a humongous task. I started using every tool available, meditation, looking at the mirror and talking to myself, reading inspirational books, repeating very inspiring quotes to myself, chanting positive affirmation, every single thing I could think of.
The trick is, when we keep on repeating the same thing again and again, the conscious mind becomes aware of it. Now, we keep repeating it enough times, from the conscious mind it slowly starts to seep into the subconscious. In between, I also consciously started to replace my negative talk with positive Self-talk. Have you any time noticed great tennis players talking to themselves during the matches? It is the same technique. They are inspiring themselves to get into that zone of the optimum level of performance. If the tennis players or great cricket players can do that, why not us for our own lives?
First, it may feel totally stupid. But, if we ourselves don't cheer for us, who else will? Also, nobody is watching us. We are doing it during our own private moments. I would have repeated so many times positive affirmations, I realized how strong a negative attitude I have formed for myself. Some of them I could have acquired even in some past lives, not really necessary that it would have been taken up in this lifetime. Anyway, I repeated, chanted, meditated, and contemplated for more than one year.
One day I was lazily doing something, and suddenly I realized my mind was telling me, 'What a beautiful life I have and what an awesome person I was.' I became totally happy. At long last, I have achieved the task I set out to do. My subconscious mind has finally become my friend. It has started inspiring, cheer-leading and motivating me. Now, I had the biggest friend I could get for my life. This technique anyone can use. It is not something just useful for me. Any human being under the Sun can do it.
Many times, we don't realize that in our own life the biggest obstruction for our progress is ourselves, not the family, neighbors, or any external circumstances. Of course, not being very aware of what we want for our own life, we definitely can take up the advice of another and find ourselves very far away from our own desires. We also can be fooled by our own mind, to chase fool's gold, while the real gem sits within us unpolished or untouched. Every scenario is possible. As long as we don't decide to lead our own life with the truest of our intentions, and taking the total responsibility for ourselves, many times we find ourselves chasing pipe dreams or fancies.
Now once my mind became my friend, the next step was to start becoming totally aware of my attitudes, behaviors, and subconscious patterns and start shedding them. So, for this, I had to really become aware, come out of my own autopilot mode, and start becoming watchful of what I am thinking and what I am doing. Not an easy place to be. We are brought up so much in an 'autopilot' mode and society also teaches us to concentrate on outside things, it is very tough to become totally aware of our own thoughts. But most of our answers lies within
Perspective change: Here we come face to face with a total attitude and perspective change. We realize that we have been conditioned so much, our intentions have become the group, community, society, or family intentions. It is good to have all these intentions. But first and foremost, we also should be aware of our own intentions. What we really want? What we truly desire? What we really came here to this Earth realm for?
So, I came face to face with, what do I really want? Until now I thought I wanted to be a scientist. But the Soul or the divine has shown me that, either I am totally wrong, or they don't want me to do it and are dead against me being a Scientist. Somehow or other, it was just not going to happen, how much ever I tried. It was shown to me subtly, blatantly, and later forcefully.
The next question now becomes what do I or more realistically, what does my Soul like? So, here the question comes to, what is my Soul's purpose? The minute that question hits us, along with that another question comes up behind it, 'What is my Soul like? What does it like? It's characteristics, attitudes, and nature? I realized, I absolutely had no idea, who in the true core of myself, I was. Because, we are what our Soul is, at the truest core.
Until that point, I was running behind a life, I 'thought' I wanted. Thought- from the mind's perspective. Total intellectualization! Now, slowly I got a glimpse of the difference between the mind and the heart. Until now my mind was actively running my life. I had no awareness of even the heart or the Soul perspective. I thought I wanted to be a Scientist. See, the difference between the mind and the heart. The mind desires, thinks, and wants. It chases things, situations, and avenues. But, when it comes to the realm of the Soul/heart, it is not what it desires or wants. But what 'it is'. Our Soul just wants to be itself. It just wants to 'be' and do what 'it is'.
That is the biggest difference. The mind goes behind everything it sees, and wants everything, the 'Maya - the grand illusion'. But the heart just wants 'to be'. It just wants to be itself. Nothing more and nothing less. So, suddenly I was brought to a place where, until then I was living as a persona, my mind created for me, for forty-six years of my life. What was I? The Biotechnologist, Scientist, the nerd, or the University graduate? But really, is that me? Am I really the Scientist or the Biotechnologist? Or am I totally a different person? Or am I no one at all?
These questions did bring me to a total bewildered state. Truly who indeed am I? Who am I? I realized I had absolutely no idea. In this whole wide world, there was nobody who could answer my question, except my own inner core. So, at this point, at least I was successful to make my mind, my friend, who was ready to work with me to find out, 'Who truly am I?' So, even at this point, I had no idea, what I was truly searching for. I only knew I needed to find the answer to the question again, 'Who am I?'
There is no way to explain this step by step process without taking my own experience as an example. If I write without my experience, it becomes a bunch of words making no sense. Hence, using my experience as an example. So, again I was brought back to the same question, 'Who am I?' and I had absolutely no clue, was the truth.
I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday!😉
Next week: Who am I? - Part 6
Note: Images from Pixabay.com
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".
All rights reserved to Jayasree Padmanabhan and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of the user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I just use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds to use their service for subscription list. I don't collect or intend to collect user data to sell or provide to third-party applications. Regards,
SwaroopaBlog.
Namaste! Hope all of you had a great week where you were able to guide your mind towards the exact things you want for your life. Last week we were discussing the tunnel called the 'Dark Night of the Soul', which is one of the toughest time any Soul may have to go through. The one thing that doesn't make sense even today for me is, why all these making jump through hoops, tough tests, life lessons and more for the Souls. Why the Divine has to make the Souls go through the trapeze of lifetimes and difficult situations. Why? Why we have to keep on learning and becoming more closer to Divine through all these experiences? Why, why, and why? Can't all the Souls be just as the divine and be wherever they want to be happy and content? Why 'Maya' (illusion?), lessons or experiences? The only answer as of now I can come up with is, 'it just is'. Nothing more or nothing less. It just 'is'.
The dark night of the Soul: Anyway back to the topic. So, for three to four years from 2013-2017, I had no idea what I was supposed to do for a career, should I even have a career, and what is this thing I am living called life? Nothing made any sense. Why I chose to take Biotechnology? Why I was not able to use my Biotech or what is even the point of all those years of studying and trying to make a career for my life?My Scientist persona was lying in pure shambles all around me. I used to be very passionate about laboratory work in my twenties and thirties. Now, even the thought of Biotechnology and the laboratory experiments involved, brought a flat line to my mind as in an ECG (Electrocardiogram machine), where the line goes flat when a person dies.
 |
| Who am I? Image courtesy - Pixabay.com |
My career brought out a flat line. Basically, my career was a 'dead body'. Done! Finished! The End! Nothing made any sense. I came to the USA, in the first place to make something of my Biotechnology. The year I came here, 1999, the company Celera Corporation had started sequencing the human genome called the 'Human Genome Project'. I watched them with President Bill Clinton in 2000 in the White House Oval Office, unveiling the project and how they sequenced the project, sitting in my living room watching on the television. But I was nowhere near to a laboratory, company, or even a test-tube. Utterly pathetic!
Fast forward fifteen years, still I had not made anything out of Biotechnology. Just a bunch of breaks, low paying jobs, and a lot of frustrations and disappointments. There were times I had scolded myself for choosing Biotechnology in the first place. Anyway, it was 2014/15/16. Nothing was working. No number of resumes, phone calls, or approaching the recruiters. To make myself calm, I used to go for nature walks. That was the one thing, I used to do every day. I would go for one hour, with my own thoughts, looking at my life from every possible angle, turning situations on its head, how to make my Biotechnology work.
Mind as the obstruction: Even that didn't bring me any answers. Absolutely no answers. A bunch of confusing thoughts. Some days after thinking and analyzing so much my head would start to ache and hurt. Then I would stop for some time. Again after sometime I would come back to square one. This continued till late 2016. I would go for walks, think every scenario and analyze. See, the one major thing I was doing here was, I was not looking for answers outside, but within. Every sacred book, Master, or Sage asks to 'enquire within'. Only I have a very active mind, my inner voice was either feeble or fully masked.
So, as long as I was analyzing, thinking, and planning, my conscious mind was active, subconscious or the inner voice just ignored me. Total silence! Nothing, not a thing came to my mind. Then one day I realized, my mind was a bunch of noises, opinions, and attitudes. In between, I also used to feel frustrations, disappointments, and regrets. Totally within the 'dark night of ignorance'. Absolutely no light! It dawned on me finally, I have to make my 'mind' quiet, if the answers have to be shown. It was very tough. To quieten a loud mind is totally a leviathan task.
I have written about it in so many posts. How do you think I was able to write? Because I had to tackle it in my own life. I had to throw away all the junk I had collected in my own mind. The social, familal, scientific, and even the ancestral conditioning. Everything I had to start discarding. A totally tough place to be. Until now not being aware was a bliss. There is an English proverb- "Ignorance is bliss'. Yes, indeed, until one becomes aware.
Once a person becomes aware, they suddenly come to the realization of the enormous load one is carrying. Each one of us is carrying a sack full of boulders lugging it around everywhere, and not realizing why our life always feels so heavy. The heaviness is not really the life, but the notions, perspectives, and attitudes we carry around, lifetime after lifetime, every round accumulating more and more, in the form of anger, guilt, shame, fear, doubt, ego, pride, attitudes and more. In an energetic sense, each is a heavy boulder in our mind. But, as the mind is the outward manifestation of our heart, truly in our heart. We have already discussed all these lower vibrations.
 |
| The boulders of emotions we carry, lugging around! Image courtesy - Pixabay.com |
When our mind is a prisoner to all these materialistic vibrations, how in the world can we ever really know what our heart/intuition/inner voice is saying? So, my next task was to start dropping one by one each of the load. But is it easy? No, never. We have lived half our life in these group attitudes, perspectives, and mentalities, most are very subconscious. How can we ever drop it? The one and the only way is to start meditation, quiet deliberation, and becoming totally aware of what we think.
We have to become totally aware of what we are thinking during our quiet moments. Until then as we would be in an 'autopilot' mode, we never truly are aware of the thoughts that keep on repeating in our mind. We must start becoming aware of that. When I started becoming aware, I realized, I did use to do some negative self-talk. The constant barrage of 'not so good career experiences' had brought my mind to a place of low self-value. It was enough for the mind to go through one or two experiences. Now, it had taken upon itself to keep me exactly where it thought I should be. So, the biggest critic was sitting within me criticizing every single step I was taking. I suddenly became aware as long as my mind is in that mode, I am not going to go anywhere. I would be stuck exactly at that place of 'no career' for eons to come.
We have discussed before, 'What we think, we become'. So, here my thoughts were, 'You don't have a career', or 'You really are not good enough to have a career'. So, even though my conscious mind was applauding for all the efforts I was putting, my sub-conscious was totally putting me down. I was not good enough. Now, remember. we have discussed before, the conscious mind is only 10-20%, while the major percent is the subconscious- 80-90%. So, here 90% my own mind, was totally at work, against me. Also, pay attention to the fact we discussed last time. The twelfth house of the Vedic astrological chart is our blind spot. Of. course the twelfth house is the subconscious. Total blind spot! I was being blindsided by my own mind! Hahaha! Here, I am trying my level best to get a career, and my mind was working very much against me.
Making the mind our cheerleader: So, the first thing I had to do, make my mind, my friend. It was indeed a humongous task. I started using every tool available, meditation, looking at the mirror and talking to myself, reading inspirational books, repeating very inspiring quotes to myself, chanting positive affirmation, every single thing I could think of.
The trick is, when we keep on repeating the same thing again and again, the conscious mind becomes aware of it. Now, we keep repeating it enough times, from the conscious mind it slowly starts to seep into the subconscious. In between, I also consciously started to replace my negative talk with positive Self-talk. Have you any time noticed great tennis players talking to themselves during the matches? It is the same technique. They are inspiring themselves to get into that zone of the optimum level of performance. If the tennis players or great cricket players can do that, why not us for our own lives?
 |
| 'Enquire within' to find answers! Image courtesy - Pixabay.com |
First, it may feel totally stupid. But, if we ourselves don't cheer for us, who else will? Also, nobody is watching us. We are doing it during our own private moments. I would have repeated so many times positive affirmations, I realized how strong a negative attitude I have formed for myself. Some of them I could have acquired even in some past lives, not really necessary that it would have been taken up in this lifetime. Anyway, I repeated, chanted, meditated, and contemplated for more than one year.
One day I was lazily doing something, and suddenly I realized my mind was telling me, 'What a beautiful life I have and what an awesome person I was.' I became totally happy. At long last, I have achieved the task I set out to do. My subconscious mind has finally become my friend. It has started inspiring, cheer-leading and motivating me. Now, I had the biggest friend I could get for my life. This technique anyone can use. It is not something just useful for me. Any human being under the Sun can do it.
Many times, we don't realize that in our own life the biggest obstruction for our progress is ourselves, not the family, neighbors, or any external circumstances. Of course, not being very aware of what we want for our own life, we definitely can take up the advice of another and find ourselves very far away from our own desires. We also can be fooled by our own mind, to chase fool's gold, while the real gem sits within us unpolished or untouched. Every scenario is possible. As long as we don't decide to lead our own life with the truest of our intentions, and taking the total responsibility for ourselves, many times we find ourselves chasing pipe dreams or fancies.
Now once my mind became my friend, the next step was to start becoming totally aware of my attitudes, behaviors, and subconscious patterns and start shedding them. So, for this, I had to really become aware, come out of my own autopilot mode, and start becoming watchful of what I am thinking and what I am doing. Not an easy place to be. We are brought up so much in an 'autopilot' mode and society also teaches us to concentrate on outside things, it is very tough to become totally aware of our own thoughts. But most of our answers lies within
Perspective change: Here we come face to face with a total attitude and perspective change. We realize that we have been conditioned so much, our intentions have become the group, community, society, or family intentions. It is good to have all these intentions. But first and foremost, we also should be aware of our own intentions. What we really want? What we truly desire? What we really came here to this Earth realm for?
So, I came face to face with, what do I really want? Until now I thought I wanted to be a scientist. But the Soul or the divine has shown me that, either I am totally wrong, or they don't want me to do it and are dead against me being a Scientist. Somehow or other, it was just not going to happen, how much ever I tried. It was shown to me subtly, blatantly, and later forcefully.
The next question now becomes what do I or more realistically, what does my Soul like? So, here the question comes to, what is my Soul's purpose? The minute that question hits us, along with that another question comes up behind it, 'What is my Soul like? What does it like? It's characteristics, attitudes, and nature? I realized, I absolutely had no idea, who in the true core of myself, I was. Because, we are what our Soul is, at the truest core.
Until that point, I was running behind a life, I 'thought' I wanted. Thought- from the mind's perspective. Total intellectualization! Now, slowly I got a glimpse of the difference between the mind and the heart. Until now my mind was actively running my life. I had no awareness of even the heart or the Soul perspective. I thought I wanted to be a Scientist. See, the difference between the mind and the heart. The mind desires, thinks, and wants. It chases things, situations, and avenues. But, when it comes to the realm of the Soul/heart, it is not what it desires or wants. But what 'it is'. Our Soul just wants to be itself. It just wants to 'be' and do what 'it is'.
 |
| Just to 'be' - One of the toughest things to do! Image courtesy - Pixabay.com |
That is the biggest difference. The mind goes behind everything it sees, and wants everything, the 'Maya - the grand illusion'. But the heart just wants 'to be'. It just wants to be itself. Nothing more and nothing less. So, suddenly I was brought to a place where, until then I was living as a persona, my mind created for me, for forty-six years of my life. What was I? The Biotechnologist, Scientist, the nerd, or the University graduate? But really, is that me? Am I really the Scientist or the Biotechnologist? Or am I totally a different person? Or am I no one at all?
These questions did bring me to a total bewildered state. Truly who indeed am I? Who am I? I realized I had absolutely no idea. In this whole wide world, there was nobody who could answer my question, except my own inner core. So, at this point, at least I was successful to make my mind, my friend, who was ready to work with me to find out, 'Who truly am I?' So, even at this point, I had no idea, what I was truly searching for. I only knew I needed to find the answer to the question again, 'Who am I?'
There is no way to explain this step by step process without taking my own experience as an example. If I write without my experience, it becomes a bunch of words making no sense. Hence, using my experience as an example. So, again I was brought back to the same question, 'Who am I?' and I had absolutely no clue, was the truth.
I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday!😉
Next week: Who am I? - Part 6
Note: Images from Pixabay.com
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried".
All rights reserved to Jayasree Padmanabhan and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of the user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I just use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds to use their service for subscription list. I don't collect or intend to collect user data to sell or provide to third-party applications. Regards,
SwaroopaBlog.
Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The opinions and perspectives shared here are that of the author/owner only. Even though the author/owner will try to research well before posting the information, the author/owner of this blog does not make any portrayal of the accuracy or correctness of the content on this blog or the links provided. The author/owner will not be liable for any omissions or inaccuracies occurred. The author/owner will not be liable for any damages or losses due to the use or display of this blog. These terms and conditions can change at any time.
This blog is purely for informational purposes only.
©Jayasree Padmanabhan and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity
This blog is purely for informational purposes only.
©Jayasree Padmanabhan and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity
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