All Entries Tagged With: "Introspection"

“There’s no such thing as a mistake.” Ha!

This is one of my favourite New Age doozers. Puhleez. Like, getting hosed because you didn’t get it in writing wasn’t a major drag. And spilling your friend’s secret to the wrong person burnt that bridge to a crisp. Or not saying “yes!” to the one that got away – well, THAT sucked. There are such things as mistakes. Major screw-ups and human stupidity happen to the best of us. The rest of us are in denial.

With great power lies great responsibility. Unlike nature that has very efficient methods of balancing power centers, man’s power centers are haphazard and self-regulated. Man is the only creature who can simultaneously live in two worlds: one on the inside and other on the outside.

monday sunriseI emptied my bedroom dustbin into the black garbage bag, ready to throw it down the chute. I had one last cigarette left in the packet and fifteen minutes to spare before I could start for the office. Giving in to the temptation, I lit the cigarette and threw the packet into the bag as well, my last piece of garbage from the weekend.

Who is God’s God?
Andre: It is a circular reference …. well for me there is no proven God. So if I can’t prove the first one I can’t even begin to theorize further. But interestingly enough I have observed too that most things in life follow a cycle including animals, plants, the planets etc. This makes me think that existence must be cyclical too. It is only human beings who see everything to have a beginning and an end; maybe we are finite-focused and not able to understand anything else ?

Her mellifluous voice served me better

Than all alarm clocks put together

As I woke up, each morning,

To the melodious tune of the cuckoo bird

I’ve taken some time this month to clean out my Gmail inbox, the main goal being to have a completely empty inbox. I went through each email one by one, until I got to the very last entry. It was labeled “journal” and dated 12/14/06. I knew it was there for me to print and [...]

Everything is beautiful in its own way…. My granny used to have a mango tree on her lawn. One evening strolling around her garden, I saw a chameleon sitting on the mango tree. The chameleon had just jumped from the creeper and its colour was slowly changing from green to brown. Suddenly a thought pumped [...]

I often feel like the horses in Central Park. You know, those horses with blinkers on, pulling their carriages, trotting up and down the cobblestone path. I imagine that the blinkers help to keep me focused on my life’s purpose. The blinkers force me to set my sights dead straight ahead and as I toil [...]

All said and done, as we tread and trudge on, on the path of life, we need to follow too. To Follow: Training, Rituals, Rights, Maps, Diagrams, Advice, Instructions, Trends, Rules, Policies, Procedures, Instincts, Music, and now also, one of the very latest of them all… trends, Twitter, etc. As we learn to follow, we [...]

Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to – John Ed Pierce My grandfather was Leonard Alphonse Laporte. (Note the small ‘p’ in LaPorte – in high school I decided a capital P was more elegant.) Like most French Canadian grand-daughters, I called him Pepe [...]

“Don’t worry son, you’ll figure it out once your career hits off, trust me now, and study what I want you to.” “Oil your hair regularly son, else you’ll lose it before you hit thirty.” “Its just a phase, you’ll figure it out don’t worry, you’re just a teenager.” Seems like yesterday when I was [...]

A new approach to time management

I think that the better part of mortal coil is snarled in reckoning with how we desire to feel, and what we can’t bear to feel. Knowing how you want to feel is half the journey to liberation. But a funny thing often happens on the way to clarity. We get clear on how we [...]

The Red Wheelbarrow – William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. So much is because of you. The letters you’ve written and sent, the touches, the kisses, the parties. Every grain of advice, set of directions, every breakfast for guests. That quarter you [...]

This is Part One of a two part exercise. Repeat: this is not a philosophical declaration to carry around in your heart. Rather, it’s a soul-teaser to wind through your bean and shake up some thought forms. The world will go on if : you don’t show up at work. : you don’t post to [...]

A friend remarked to me that what defines America is its veneration of entrepreneurship. The French, he added, most admired style and elegance. What defines India? That was the challenge my American friend posed. Before I could speak a word, he admonished me, “Don’t give me the clichéd answer that anything one says about India [...]

What repels you? Nosy neighbors. Organized religion? Bohemia? Modern design or gold-gilded embellishments? Knowing what does not work for you is a powerful tool for creating more of what does work for you. Measuring positive feelings against negative feelings is one of the constructive ways to use comparison, and it’s a great way to tune [...]

“…holding no prisoner to guilt, we become free.” – The Course In Miracles Someone asked me this week, “Have you forgiven so and so for such and such?” And I did the puppy head tilt, “Huh?” This question throws me for a loop. “Well…I don’t really feel like it’s my place to forgive them,” I [...]

Finally, the sun set on Seattle’s unusually long summer today. The skies turned gray overnight, the sun appearing only in short breaks among periods of incessant rain. However, much as I may dislike the ceaseless Seattle rains, I cannot deny my love for the assuredness of the familiar, which they bring. The rain has stopped now, as [...]

We’re so occupied with home improvement and self-improvement that it’s difficult to see the true self that’s underneath. Who are you fixing, anyway? Do you know? Maybe you don’t need improving at all. Perhaps your original self is more beautiful than you even imagined.

Our dreams and desires define us. Be they broken, scarcely remembered, on the verge of reality, or in full bloom. They pilot our choices. Dreams have the power to shape the entire landscape of our lives. Because they tend to be so precious and potent, many people keep their dreams and aspirations to themselves. A [...]

Chaos is a name for any order that creates confusion in our minds – George Santayana. Man has a basic resistance to chaos. He likes life predictable and systematic. Want evidence? Look around you. See how good a man is at creating systems that are simple, identical and replicable. The quality, dimensions and features of [...]

I like walking in the rain, because nobody can see me crying. Charlie Chaplin. I recently participated in a ‘heated’ dinner debate about which is the best season of them all. One person said “winter” for all the cosy comforts it provides. Another said “summer”, firstly because of school holidays and secondly for its importance [...]

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is: What am I drawn to? Plenty of people are inspirationally challenged – not sure of what lights their fire. Others are so selective about what floats their boat that not much new can get past their preferences. Whether you’re confused or highly particular, curiosity [...]

I’m turning 40 in a few weeks. Bizarre. Surreal. Cannot believe it. Just yesterday I was at ecstatically getting the hell out of high school, wearing shoulder pads and stilettos underneath my graduation gown; knowing full well that the world was my oyster and that extra-hold hair mousse would get me through almost any encounter. [...]

Last night while reading one of the chapters of the great epic Mahabharata  I came across a passage where Yaksha questions Yudishtir, “What is the greatest wonder in the world?” Yudishtir answers, “The greatest wonder is that although people see living beings die every day, they still try to live for ever”. This was one [...]

I’m loving: 1. Rebecca Walker’s perspective on Chris Brown’s violent attack on Rhianna: “This is about relationships and what healthy ones look like,” she told ABC News. “It’s about intimacy and how little we, as a culture, know about cultivating and maintaining it. It’s about love, what it is, and what it isn’t.” 2. This [...]

On my first trip to India, my friends and I made two important visits. We went far north for a private audience with the Dalai Lama. And we went far south to stay at the Ashram of the famous guru Sathya Sai Baba. Sai Baba is a controversial swami. I have right-minded friends who have [...]

Turning points. They are experienced by everyone. These are events that are capable of transforming the entire being of a person: both positively and negatively. They can restructure psyches – or sometimes even shatter them and create new ones in place. What is the reach of such incidents? Everywhere possible – individually and collectively, physically [...]

How many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky? Yes, and how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry? Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows, That too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, [...]

A few months ago, a series of questions were posted on Tickled By Life which was given the title ‘The God Interview’. I found both the questions and the various sets of answers very illuminating as well as the comments that were posted on the individual articles. In my case I received a series of [...]

We crave it. We die for it. We try to pay for it. We aspire, we mire, we miss the mark. In the unending, coiling, incessant pursuit of being right and good enough to find love and get love and give love, we forget about the very nature of love itself. Love gets buried beneath [...]

It’s all very nice to believe in a power greater than myself – some version of a beneficent overseer with management capabilities that boggle the mind – but I want a personal relationship, not a vague idea or a one-way yearning. Over the years, that desire has led me to develop a system of getting [...]

To find out how other Ticklers and readers responded to these questions click here. If you would like to take this interview as well, mail us your answers at interview@tickledbylife.com. (we will publish only the best responses) What is God? Sanjiv: God is a creation of early human beings from a time when there were [...]

To find out how other Ticklers and readers responded to these questions click here. If you would like to take this interview as well, mail us your answers at interview@tickledbylife.com. (we will publish only the best responses) What is God? Sundar: Are we asking – What is God or Who is God? Please read my [...]

I stay in the coastal city of Chennai and one of my favorite pastimes is to explore the coastline that borders one side of the city. Starting from the crowded marina and Eliot’s Beach to the less crowded and secluded ones that dot the East Coast Road (or ECR as it is called), I have [...]

Push. Push. Push. And if that doesn’t accelerate the dream quickly enough, then push from a different angle. But keep pushing – that’s a given, right? Nope. Pushing maintains the swirl. Sometimes, what’s out of sight and zooming toward you isn’t quite here yet. A leap in another direction doesn’t always land you in a [...]

The phone rang just after I had finished the lunch hour at work. The familiar residence number flashed on my cellphone. I took the call while I walked from my desk to a corner in the office for that much anticipated 5 minute conversation with my ten year old son. “Hey mom,” he said, waiting [...]

Any honest scientist will tell you that the theory of evolution is only a theory, and nothing more. For many years, evolutionists have tried very hard, often resorting to imaginative concepts, conjecture and assumptions to prove their point. Let us take a look at the basis of the evolution theory and let the logical thinking [...]

I remember several tales told to me, as a child, by my beloved grandmother. My grandparents had a huge mansion with several large trees on the spacious compound. All of us, as a family, would gather here every summer as a kind of annual reunion. The days being long, evenings would stretch too. They would [...]

An opportunity (relating to material world) comes one’s way in normal course without any effort or initiative.  One starts pursuing the opportunity and soon the door is closed.  What is the teaching in this? The question refers to a pursuit that did not bring the desired result. Interestingly, the pursuit began when an opportunity one [...]

I began to meditate in 1990. About a year later, at my guru’s ashram, I was asked to teach meditation. Given the fact that I myself was relatively new to the practice, I was not sure of any success as a teacher. However, I had underestimated the power of grace. The teaching sessions at the [...]

Would somebody tell me how valuable I am? Am I more valuable dead than alive? You would of course say “alive”. Truly you would say I am asking a pointless and silly question. Very well, then would you explain to me why nobody could find time to visit Mr. X when he was alive but [...]

It must be common to have realizations inside an ICU as one is in the vicinity of uncertainty & an unknown world beyond that. I understand that and I also understand that feelings one has towards their parents are usually not shared especially amongst the male populace. So I thought this would give me a [...]

When I ask myself what good I did last year, I do proudly say, “Much more than I ever did in the past.” So have I turned a new leaf and taken to philanthropy or social service last year? No, nothing of that sort. Why then, this proud reflection of the year gone by? I [...]

All of us have been helped without an exception. From the very first day we were born. By the doctors, midwife or by a nurse, to begin with. Thereafter, once we were born… We began our journey, with 24*7 help, from our mother. Then our parents. Our siblings. Our classmates. Our college friends. Our peers. [...]

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” – E.E. Cummings I believe no truer words were ever spoken. It is so hard to remain true [...]