Life - Going with the flow!
Hello all,
Namaste! Hope all of you had a great weekend, Thanksgiving long weekend for the U.S.A and a beautiful and relaxing weekend for the rest of the world. Yes, indeed I also had a very beautiful weekend. Thinking back, during that weekend I was not much thinking about the blog I wrote last week or the blog I am supposed to write for this week. The weekend was so beautiful I felt I was living in the moment.Now let us all think back, haven't we had such lovely moments where we were just living in that moment or in the present moment or the 'Now'? Today we are going to discuss a closely related aspect to that, how to go with the flow in our life.
Also as we have been discussing Mythology for past several weeks, this week let us move away from that and drink some pure Philosophy and see how we can bring that into our lives and go with the flow. For this let us go back to the time when every one of us was a toddler. We discussed this a bit in our very first post. In those days, we would have been very busy playing with our toys or making a mess of ourselves. But think in that time, when we were playing with a particular toy, say it was a toy train, would we have thought about the previous toy, maybe a toy elephant which we just threw to the side to get our toy train? No way! We would have been fully concentrated on that train, how many wheels it has, how it moves along the tracks or what type of a whistle or noise it is producing. In that moment we would have been so engrossed in the train, our world becomes the train.
Now at that moment, will we think of the next toy we are planning to play with? Absolutely not. Only after we lose interest in our train we go to the next toy. Every one of us was like that in our toddler years. But then how did we lose that capability when we became an adult. Where did that toddler girl/boy disappear who found joy in simply be and enjoy fully the work at our hand? How did we transform into adults, who are either thinking about our past deeds, mistakes or regrets or the thinking about the future that is yet to unfold and about which we have absolutely no knowledge? Where did our toddler Self-get lost? Should we search her/him and recapture her/him and bring back into our lives?
Most probably we lost our toddler/child Self when we started our school where we had to remember the previous lessons we already studied or the exams or the tests we are supposed to take later in the year. So we were asked to think about our past and prepare for our future. We were constantly prodded and prompted to think in the past/future terms and while doing this we lost our toddler Self who enjoys being in the moment. But is it possible to recapture her/him? Most probably Yes and bring her/him back to our life to make our life fun and frolic.
Here let us discuss a concept. Think, what are we doing at this very moment? I am thinking/ writing/typing this blog while thinking about my toddler Self and all of you are reading and thinking about your toddler Self. At this very exact moment when I am typing / you are reading this line, can we go to an entirely different physical location at a moment's notice? Say like a physical translocation? Impossible! So at this present moment, we are only able to do exactly what we are doing at this very moment. Now another question, say we scored terribly in our final year school or college examination. Can we go back in time and rewrite the exam and get our scores up? Unfeasible! Another scenario, let us say somehow we found out something is going to happen to us in the future (Don't ask me how just imagine or maybe we went to a fantastic astrologer ;-) ). Can we literally go into the future and try somehow to change our outcome? No! we cannot go back into the past or go forward into the future while we are being in this physical body, while we are in this blood and bones body; we are restricted by time, body and space (Of course maybe the soul can do that, but we are talking here about our physical body). Definitely, we can change our behavior in the present, to somehow change the outcome in the future. Past, the only thing we can do is not to repeat the mistakes we did in our yesteryear and use those experiences as our wisdom to make wiser decisions for our future.
From this what do we understand? In truth, in this lifetime we have only the present moment or the 'Now' as Eckhart Tolle describes in his book,"The Power of Now". So many times we don't realize our life is just a string made of numerous moments or the 'Now'. So we have only this present moment or 'Now' to do something for ourselves and this moment, if we lost becomes our past and the next moment takes its place. So what should we do? We should take charge of our 'Now' and decide consciously our choices so that the next moment becomes useful to us. So what is the best way to live our lives?
Here let us talk about another example, which comes to mind. In Yoga, there is a pose called Warrior 2 (Veerabhadrasana 2), where the person has to stand with her/his arms and legs stretched. The left arm extends backward and the right arm extends forward. Even though both arms are stretched the person has to stand in the middle balancing the arms and legs without toppling. To stand balanced in this Yogasana one has to be in the moment, looking at both hands, but standing in the spot rooted in their balancing pose. Here the arm extending backward we can take as the past experiences and the arm extending forward can be considered the future that is yet to come. With this pose, we stand in our present moment with all our inner power (Veera - Hero, Bhadra - grace, asana - pose), while taking the wisdom of the past experiences and using that in the present moment to sculpt out the future we want for ourselves. In this pose, only one of our arm or our vision extends into the future, not ourselves as a whole. We as a person are standing in our present moment very powerfully as a Veera or a hero.
Take full responsibility for our present moment, live with awareness to take wise decisions and go with the flow with anticipation to see what the next moment in our life can bring us. But many times we ignore, the present moment, (That is why it is called the 'Present' or the gift), and go into our past or future mode and waste the only true moment we have in our hands. So much waste of the present moment we do ( Yes, I am also very much a culprit of that :-) ). So how can we go with the flow? There is a powerful example we can look at, which we can imitate and bring that essence into our life. Let us discuss that.
Water: The chemical formula for it is H2O. We can only live three days without it and we see it filled in the earth's lakes, rivers, and oceans. Yes, Water! Think about water. It is a colorless, tasteless and odorless substance that has one very powerful quality. It's quality of flow or being flowing. Water takes the shape of whichever vessel it happens to be in. Put it in a pot, it takes the shape of a pot. Pour it in a trough, it takes the shape of the trough. Or fill a lake with it. It takes the shape of the lake. But the second you take it from the lake into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup.
The water molecules are so flexible that it takes the shape of the container it is in. Now let us imagine a river. Think of the river as meandering through a beautiful forest lush and green, and going and joining a sea somewhere. The river has a lot of water in it and each water droplet is flowing with the river. Now at a particular place in the forest, the river comes across a very beautiful patch of forest or a very horrible part of the woods, will the river stop there to enjoy the beautiful patch or will the river become fearful of the horrible part? No, it continues flowing.
Now the same example, take for our life. Think our lifetime is the river and all the droplets of water in the river are the moments in our life. Now think we are standing in the middle of this river and the moments are flowing incessantly around us or more aptly through us. This second we are in say this particular moment A, the next moment the particular moment A has been replaced by the next moment B. A has gone forever. Now we have only B to work with. But instead of working with B, we start thinking about A, which has already passed us or anticipate C, which is only coming later. So at this moment, we have only the B moment to work with.
Here let us assume we are a water droplet and the river is carrying us and we are flowing through the river, but instead of flowing aimlessly we are also being aware and flow through the life like a water droplet catching every present moment to live fully in the present. Won't that type of living, be fantastic? We allow the flow of life to carry us, but unlike a water droplet that flows without a thought, we flow through life with awareness and consciously standing in the powerful present moment and taking decisions for our lives consciously and being aware of our true potential.
But the problem many times we have is that we don't flow as the water flows and we don't take the shape of the character we are being assigned fully in that particular moment in life. Water fully takes the shape of the container it has been given, but we as humans many times don't fully fill our part in life, taking the full power of that particular part we have been assigned for that particular moment in time. This means we live our life half-hearted than fully embracing and filling the jar or pot we have been given whether it is the part of a man/woman/business person/architect/singer or any number of forms we can take. The same way the minute the water is poured out of the pot and into a trough it takes the shape of the trough. But we humans get stuck in the previous character we have been assigned in our life, whatever it has been. But life asks us to fill the trough we have been given at that moment fully and live as a trough till the next pot comes along. But instead of being the trough we keep on thinking about the jar we have been or the pot we are going to be. But then at the present moment, we only have our trough, not the jar or the pot.
Here is where we should bring back our toddler Self. Once we recapture that essence we will have no problem of being the trough as we will not be thinking about the jar or the pot and we will fully fill our trough of life as the water and live a life beautifully capturing the full essence of the present moment of 'Now'. But to bring back our toddler Self we may have to start reconditioning our brain which has been taught all through our school and adult life to think about the past and future while completely ignoring the present - Now!
It may be very difficult to achieve that, but the brain is a very flexible organ and can be rewired by continuous affirmations and constantly bringing our focus back to the present Now. It will be a very hard task, but then as all of us know, nothing in life comes just like that without putting effort and conscious intent behind what we need to do in our life. So wishing that every one of us becomes like water and flow through our life with complete awareness and flexibility capturing the powerful present moment of 'Now'!!
Let us finish with a beautiful quote.
I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday! 😉
Next week: Surya - The Soul or the Swaroopa!
Note: Images made by Swaroopa.
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 the author (SwaroopaStargazer) and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds for their service for subscription. 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 viewpoints 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.
©SwaroopaStargazer and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity.
Namaste! Hope all of you had a great weekend, Thanksgiving long weekend for the U.S.A and a beautiful and relaxing weekend for the rest of the world. Yes, indeed I also had a very beautiful weekend. Thinking back, during that weekend I was not much thinking about the blog I wrote last week or the blog I am supposed to write for this week. The weekend was so beautiful I felt I was living in the moment.Now let us all think back, haven't we had such lovely moments where we were just living in that moment or in the present moment or the 'Now'? Today we are going to discuss a closely related aspect to that, how to go with the flow in our life.
Also as we have been discussing Mythology for past several weeks, this week let us move away from that and drink some pure Philosophy and see how we can bring that into our lives and go with the flow. For this let us go back to the time when every one of us was a toddler. We discussed this a bit in our very first post. In those days, we would have been very busy playing with our toys or making a mess of ourselves. But think in that time, when we were playing with a particular toy, say it was a toy train, would we have thought about the previous toy, maybe a toy elephant which we just threw to the side to get our toy train? No way! We would have been fully concentrated on that train, how many wheels it has, how it moves along the tracks or what type of a whistle or noise it is producing. In that moment we would have been so engrossed in the train, our world becomes the train.
Now at that moment, will we think of the next toy we are planning to play with? Absolutely not. Only after we lose interest in our train we go to the next toy. Every one of us was like that in our toddler years. But then how did we lose that capability when we became an adult. Where did that toddler girl/boy disappear who found joy in simply be and enjoy fully the work at our hand? How did we transform into adults, who are either thinking about our past deeds, mistakes or regrets or the thinking about the future that is yet to unfold and about which we have absolutely no knowledge? Where did our toddler Self-get lost? Should we search her/him and recapture her/him and bring back into our lives?
Most probably we lost our toddler/child Self when we started our school where we had to remember the previous lessons we already studied or the exams or the tests we are supposed to take later in the year. So we were asked to think about our past and prepare for our future. We were constantly prodded and prompted to think in the past/future terms and while doing this we lost our toddler Self who enjoys being in the moment. But is it possible to recapture her/him? Most probably Yes and bring her/him back to our life to make our life fun and frolic.
Here let us discuss a concept. Think, what are we doing at this very moment? I am thinking/ writing/typing this blog while thinking about my toddler Self and all of you are reading and thinking about your toddler Self. At this very exact moment when I am typing / you are reading this line, can we go to an entirely different physical location at a moment's notice? Say like a physical translocation? Impossible! So at this present moment, we are only able to do exactly what we are doing at this very moment. Now another question, say we scored terribly in our final year school or college examination. Can we go back in time and rewrite the exam and get our scores up? Unfeasible! Another scenario, let us say somehow we found out something is going to happen to us in the future (Don't ask me how just imagine or maybe we went to a fantastic astrologer ;-) ). Can we literally go into the future and try somehow to change our outcome? No! we cannot go back into the past or go forward into the future while we are being in this physical body, while we are in this blood and bones body; we are restricted by time, body and space (Of course maybe the soul can do that, but we are talking here about our physical body). Definitely, we can change our behavior in the present, to somehow change the outcome in the future. Past, the only thing we can do is not to repeat the mistakes we did in our yesteryear and use those experiences as our wisdom to make wiser decisions for our future.
From this what do we understand? In truth, in this lifetime we have only the present moment or the 'Now' as Eckhart Tolle describes in his book,"The Power of Now". So many times we don't realize our life is just a string made of numerous moments or the 'Now'. So we have only this present moment or 'Now' to do something for ourselves and this moment, if we lost becomes our past and the next moment takes its place. So what should we do? We should take charge of our 'Now' and decide consciously our choices so that the next moment becomes useful to us. So what is the best way to live our lives?
Here let us talk about another example, which comes to mind. In Yoga, there is a pose called Warrior 2 (Veerabhadrasana 2), where the person has to stand with her/his arms and legs stretched. The left arm extends backward and the right arm extends forward. Even though both arms are stretched the person has to stand in the middle balancing the arms and legs without toppling. To stand balanced in this Yogasana one has to be in the moment, looking at both hands, but standing in the spot rooted in their balancing pose. Here the arm extending backward we can take as the past experiences and the arm extending forward can be considered the future that is yet to come. With this pose, we stand in our present moment with all our inner power (Veera - Hero, Bhadra - grace, asana - pose), while taking the wisdom of the past experiences and using that in the present moment to sculpt out the future we want for ourselves. In this pose, only one of our arm or our vision extends into the future, not ourselves as a whole. We as a person are standing in our present moment very powerfully as a Veera or a hero.
Take full responsibility for our present moment, live with awareness to take wise decisions and go with the flow with anticipation to see what the next moment in our life can bring us. But many times we ignore, the present moment, (That is why it is called the 'Present' or the gift), and go into our past or future mode and waste the only true moment we have in our hands. So much waste of the present moment we do ( Yes, I am also very much a culprit of that :-) ). So how can we go with the flow? There is a powerful example we can look at, which we can imitate and bring that essence into our life. Let us discuss that.
Water: The chemical formula for it is H2O. We can only live three days without it and we see it filled in the earth's lakes, rivers, and oceans. Yes, Water! Think about water. It is a colorless, tasteless and odorless substance that has one very powerful quality. It's quality of flow or being flowing. Water takes the shape of whichever vessel it happens to be in. Put it in a pot, it takes the shape of a pot. Pour it in a trough, it takes the shape of the trough. Or fill a lake with it. It takes the shape of the lake. But the second you take it from the lake into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup.
 |
| Water in a lake - Crater lake, U.S.A. |
Now the same example, take for our life. Think our lifetime is the river and all the droplets of water in the river are the moments in our life. Now think we are standing in the middle of this river and the moments are flowing incessantly around us or more aptly through us. This second we are in say this particular moment A, the next moment the particular moment A has been replaced by the next moment B. A has gone forever. Now we have only B to work with. But instead of working with B, we start thinking about A, which has already passed us or anticipate C, which is only coming later. So at this moment, we have only the B moment to work with.
Here let us assume we are a water droplet and the river is carrying us and we are flowing through the river, but instead of flowing aimlessly we are also being aware and flow through the life like a water droplet catching every present moment to live fully in the present. Won't that type of living, be fantastic? We allow the flow of life to carry us, but unlike a water droplet that flows without a thought, we flow through life with awareness and consciously standing in the powerful present moment and taking decisions for our lives consciously and being aware of our true potential.
But the problem many times we have is that we don't flow as the water flows and we don't take the shape of the character we are being assigned fully in that particular moment in life. Water fully takes the shape of the container it has been given, but we as humans many times don't fully fill our part in life, taking the full power of that particular part we have been assigned for that particular moment in time. This means we live our life half-hearted than fully embracing and filling the jar or pot we have been given whether it is the part of a man/woman/business person/architect/singer or any number of forms we can take. The same way the minute the water is poured out of the pot and into a trough it takes the shape of the trough. But we humans get stuck in the previous character we have been assigned in our life, whatever it has been. But life asks us to fill the trough we have been given at that moment fully and live as a trough till the next pot comes along. But instead of being the trough we keep on thinking about the jar we have been or the pot we are going to be. But then at the present moment, we only have our trough, not the jar or the pot.
 |
| Water - Going with the flow! |
It may be very difficult to achieve that, but the brain is a very flexible organ and can be rewired by continuous affirmations and constantly bringing our focus back to the present Now. It will be a very hard task, but then as all of us know, nothing in life comes just like that without putting effort and conscious intent behind what we need to do in our life. So wishing that every one of us becomes like water and flow through our life with complete awareness and flexibility capturing the powerful present moment of 'Now'!!
Let us finish with a beautiful quote.
 |
| Quote from Buddha (Read that the original quote may be slightly different) |
I wish you a good weekend and I'll see you next Friday! 😉
Next week: Surya - The Soul or the Swaroopa!
Note: Images made by Swaroopa.
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 the author (SwaroopaStargazer) and SwaroopaBlog.
To my Blog readers: As all of you know, the European Union has passed laws regarding the collection of user data. This is just to inform all my EU blog readers, I use Google Analytics, which Google provides, to look at from where readers are reading my blogs. I also use Specific feeds for their service for subscription. 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 viewpoints 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.
©SwaroopaStargazer and Swaroopa, 2017- Eternity.
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