The Word - Originality!
Hello all,
Namaste! All of you, my dear blog readers, know about my website-swaroopa.net. I have started my business, Swaroopa store, which can be accessed from Shop tab on my website, for beings who are interested in a personal reading. There is also the Swaroopa Store link, on my blog's left side. Now to the post.
Hope, all are keeping safe, hale and healthy. Before proceeding any further, I want to let my blog readers know, Google is stopping their Blogger email subscription service from July 2021. So, many may not be getting my blogs through emails any more. I will add all the emails to my other email subscription called follow it. As of now, they are providing email subscription without any advertisements for my blog readers. Hope they continue to do that always. Thank you follow it! In case, any one needs an email subscription service, please consider them and give them a try. As they are providing their email service free of advertisements or charge, I wanted to give them a shout out! Thank you again, follow it. So, check for your email to accept the web-link or button most probably follow it may be sending in another 2-3 days. I will manually add all to that service.
I also have included a Blogger Feed service. People can avail the blog, signing up there as well. This RSS service provides the Blog in a beautiful Newspaper Format. The RSS subscription service can be seen as an orange button on the left panel of the Blog page. When you click on the button, it would ask you to select your favorite RSS feed of choice. Select that Reader and confirm by clicking the button. You would start getting your weekly blog in a great Newspaper format when you open your RSS Feed app on your phone or personal computer.
The below image shows, how the button looks on the first page and how the blog looks on your Reader of choice. Follow it as well as Feedly are two good RSS readers. Google has decided to stop its own email service and is planning to promote the RSS Feed more instead. If the readers have any doubts, please post the questions on the comments section and I would try to clarify.
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| How the blog looks on the RSS Feed when you subscribe by clicking the Orange button Image credits - Swaroopa |
Now, another update, I have started to put a few advertisements on my blog. To keep on writing for my blog readers, I need to find some remuneration for my mind, time, effort and energy. These advertisements, I have tried to put in such a way, it is not blaring or glaring to the blog readers, but would show up only at the very end of your device and also when you go from one blog post to the next blog post. I have tried to integrate it seamlessly into my content. If the readers click on the advertisements, it would send some payment from the advertisers through Google through your kindness. Thank you from my heart anytime you are clicking the advertisements. It would help me to keep on writing, would keep the advertisers happy and my blog readers also get to keep on reading my blog. Thank you again! 🙏 Now, to the real post for today
Inner grit: Last one and a half years have taught humanity inner grit, resilience, patience and huge Self-trust. All needed in this dense energy of a materialistic Earth plane called the Samsara Sagara. The previous "normal" we used to enjoy feels like some ages ago and humanity is still struggling to embrace this new normal. But humanity has gone through many trials and tribulations before. This is not the first time some mishap has overtaken humanity.
The world has seen ice-ages, dark ages, religious war fares, ethnic cleansing and genocide, two World wars, Bubonic plague, many other epidemics and a 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. The world also has seen concentration camps, Nazi and Fascist regimes, authoritarian governments, and people being made nameless, voiceless and identity less. The world has gone through many challenges before. Again, humanity is being placed in front of a challenge where a microscopic organism has become the culprit. This too shall pass and we would find ourselves as the victors on the other side of the pandemic, once again.
From all the news, social media chatter and the Quora answers I write, I find that humanity has been forced to be inside the four walls of our home and made to think about our own life, the place we have in the world, our purpose at this time, now and what else can we do in such a position? Innumerable people have lost their previous way of life, career, employment as well as business. This has forced people to look at themselves, what they can do different at this time and how to take their life, family, career and job forward.
This pandemic is forcing people to do something most are very uncomfortable doing. To look at oneself, their life and what they are doing at this present moment and time in the globe's life. I also was forced by my own life some six years back to look at, contemplate and analyze. Inner analysis of oneself, one's life and greater purpose in my own life. I did everything I could to not to look at myself and my life. I cried, whined, self-pitied, cribbed and complained, did everything in my hands to not to do it.
But life took away one of the most important things I very much wanted in my life. My career. The science career I painstakingly built up in twenty-five years came crashing down. Zero career and no job. Life said that career is done! Finito! Either you find another career or stay career or profession less for the rest of your life. So, it literally twisted my arm or rather mind, so that I would look at my own life as upside down as a bat (Funny, it is a virus from the bat that has made the world upside down now.) I am also including a Tamil film song that is asking to live life from the heart and look at life from an upside perspective hanging on a tree-again like a bat, I suppose.Heart: Many times, in our hurry-berry called life we forget to listen to our own inner Self and heart. It also doesn't help, that as humans we have always tried to find guidance outside. This has been the case for centuries and millennia. We have looked up to leaders in history, in the society and in the culture. Yes, all these leaders and mentors are extremely important.
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| Sir Issac Newton Image credits - After Godfrey Kneller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
He added to the existing knowledge using his own brain and mind and figured out the gravitational force. It was new knowledge, which added to the already existing knowledge. So, in the same way, each human, after accessing the knowledge which is already available in this Earth to become learned and knowledgeable, is meant to add more by virtue of newer innate, original thought processes.
Otherwise, why is each of us provided with our own mind, brain, intelligence and intellect? It is for us to use. But the mind is incapable of bringing out genuine and original ideas. The mind is great at figuring out brilliant ways to put an idea into practice. But bringing out the original idea or imagination itself the mind is not able to do. That is the realm and agenda of the heart. But we as a group in the last four hundred years have given so much importance to the mind and logic that we have neglected our own heart, intuition and emotions.
That is why nowadays scientists and other logical people are finding it very difficult to bring out new and original ideas. Because imagination and ideas are the agenda of the heart and emotions. But in our chase to become very logical and rational, we have left our heart in the dust.
Above this, modern humanity thinks showing emotions is soft, a more feminine quality that should be hidden. This further suppresses the heart and emotions, which is further lock on the realm of ideas and imaginations. If we peruse the works of poets, writers, painters, creators or artists, their art and works drip with emotions and heart. Poets and writers portray idea after idea in their writing and poetry. What is different between them and scientists/ logicians? Scientists and rational people have decided to live from their mind while the artists and poets are living from their hearts/ emotions.
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| Heart or mind? The great divide Image credits - Pixabay.com |
The great divide: This is the great divide humanity finds itself in. Some people are so logical, they ignore their heart. Some people are so emotional, they ignore their logic. But each human is provided with an inner heart as well as an outer mind. The heart I write about is always the metaphorical heart, not the physical beating heart. So, why are we always choosing one over the other? Aren't we meant to use both?
We should. This was the conundrum I found myself in 2013 and 2014. I had been a scientist for around twenty years; was all about logic and mind. But in 2014-15, my metaphorical heart was getting fed up with my chase behind anything logical and mental. It pulled the plug of interest on my previous career. Suddenly I found laboratory and research not fun anymore. My problem became what to choose heart or mind.
I struggled with this decision for almost one or two years. Then a random Soul one day let me know, why choose one? Choose both- heart as well as mind. That option had never occurred in my thoughts. I was thinking either heart or the mind. But today I can write confidently, it is when an individual chooses heart as well as mind, all their options, current as well as hidden opens up.
The heart and the emotions are where the "Why" or purpose of our life and our interests, desires, ideas and imaginations exists. Of course, nowadays I even feel ideas and imaginations come from beyond the heart, from the Soul and the spiritual realms. Heart and emotions are indeed deeply connected with ideas and imagination. But the "How" to bring out an idea, the clinks in a project, the way a creative gig needs to be brought out, that is the function of the mind.
People sit in this great divide; idea people have the "Why" and the logical people have the "How". One lot has the ideas and the other lot has the way to work it out. This is how artists cannot understand scientists and scientists cannot relate to artists. Artists should try to develop the logic- the How? How can I bring my creation to the forefront, how can I showcase my art in front of the global square? Same way scientists should develop their Why? Why am I doing these experiments? Why do I need to pursue this thought of logic? Then, use the How can I help humanity more. What kind of progress my research endeavors would bring to humans?
Video Credits - Michael Jackson - Remember the Time- YouTube.com
Like this, both the Why as well as the How are important. A human is not supposed to choose heart or mind. Instead, they are meant to choose both. Heart and emotions aligned with the higher Self, which helps to bring up ideas and imaginations, which could be brought out to the physical world using the mind, thoughts and logic. Both aligned well, that the ideas and imaginations from the inner most core and spiritual world gets its beautiful expression in the physical world.
Think about the performers Michael Jackson and Madonna. Both had abundant music and creativity within them as sounds and words. But if they had not used their mind to bring them out as sounds, music and performance, the physical world would never have been able to enjoy it. They took the idea, imagination, creativity and art of their heart, put it into music/ words as performance and presented it to the world. The world was totally hooked to these divine musicians.
Originality: What makes some personalities like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma Gandhi, unique? What is so very different in them that is not there in others? They had the courage to embrace their heart and live from their core. It takes courage and boldness to live as ourselves. Because the world would see us exactly who we are. Not everyone is courageous enough to show their true and authentic Self.
People are many times deeply afraid to live and be who they are. Humans are always fearful of the criticisms, judgements and fault-finding others bring. We as humans are always asked to align with the group and be within the folds of social, familial and ancestral conditioning. Because in the Cave man and middle age times groups and being in a tribe meant strength. It protected humans, especially the weak among us women and children. So, the tribe or group asked people to confer to the group dynamics and rules.
Yes, it is great to be in a group and one among many. But Michael Jackson, Madonna, Lincoln or Gandhi never left the group to try to be themselves. Instead, they embraced their originality while being within the group itself. If they can live and be like that, why not us, You and I? We too can, correct? What is so different in Lincoln, Gandhi, Jackson or Madonna, which we don't have? They also had a mind, brain, intellect, intelligence and heart. We too are provided with all of them. (Of course, this is about ordinary beings. Mentally challenged people have other dire issues they deal with. Hope all of them find the best expression of their own life.)
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| Madonna Image credits - chrisweger, via Wikimedia Commons |
So, again my question, if they can live a very original and authentic life, why can't we? What is stopping us? Most probably our own self-consciousness in sharing our thoughts, ideas, imagination, concepts and perspectives. We are afraid that if we stand apart every eye would be on us. But then, we also have only this one life, correct? If we don't live this life as us, are we truly living our life? Aren't we faking as someone while the true authentic person is deeply sitting within us never to see the light of the day? Isn't that self-deception and falsity?
How can we think of leading an original life, if we are deeply afraid others would put their focus on us? Should we spend our own life trying to live as someone else, wearing a mask over our heart, thoughts, mind and perspectives? That is the difference between Jackson, Madonna, Lincoln, Gandhi and us. We try to live within the group as insignificant and cookie cutter beings, while our magnificent, original and authentic Self remains deeply dormant within.
It is a personal choice and free will decision. How are we planning to live, exist and thrive? As cookie cutter mold, fake, masked persona beings or breathtakingly beautiful, original and authentic beings? But one thing is for sure. That decision if we are ready to take up would definitely push us out of our comfort zone and we would be forced to stand apart, for sure. Are we ready to face that challenge? But then, we also have only one life to live. Shouldn't we live it as original and as authentic as possible? That decision is always a free will and personal choice!