Disillusioned In Love

“Seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of an irrecoverable football game.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Growing up, our little minds were coloured with fairytales, romantic films and when our minds fell in love with the idea of love, romantic tragedies rained over us. The real tragedy is what colours were used while colouring our minds. A tragedy in a film is but a glorification of practicality and irrationality to the point of obsessive romanticism. Romanticism We romanticize love and hence it naturally follows that we romanticise the tragedy of its failure. Does it occur to one, that if love did genuinely awaken every pore in our body and if it truly did feel as though the universe has worked for millennia for the beautiful collision of 2 souls, 2 lives, then would failure really be one of the optional courses of destiny that the cosmos lay before the life of that glorious Love? “Love is Blindness” I’ve come to believe, at least at this present moment, that love truly is either a delusion if in extreme forms, an obsession if it’s compulsive and if it is life long, I speak of romantic love here, it is glorified attachment. The soul, when the soul loves, it doesn’t love with conditions of commitment, nor with conditions of a way of life and most certainly not with greed and selfishness that the bantered intermingling of mankind that humanity calls Love. The soul loves with openness and acceptance, with freedom and happiness. It doesn’t seek material fulfilment nor does it seek reciprocation and it certainly doesn’t demand bondage. Its ties are woven intricately, with readiness- to untie and fade or to unite and strengthen. The soul loves with unity and oneness irrespective of choice, proximity and even social dynamics. It transcends the tragedy of life and the dramaticization of romance. It escapes the seven sins of gluttony, sloth, wrath, anger, pride, envy and lust. It doesn’t preach and it doesn’t constrain but releases and relieves. It lives the loved one like the lover, the lover and the loved are one and the same. Practicality and Irrationality There is indeed, a practical purpose to romantic love. It’s viewed as a cure to the malignant disease of loneliness, as the medicine of naturally drawn honey for the bitter after taste of an empty, uncertain and unfulfilled life. We seek romance and apparent love to alleviate the stigma of bachelorhood, the rumour of impotency and the allegation of homosexuality. We seek romance and apparent love to alienate ourselves from the perceptually harsh and forlorn prospectus of being kinless. We want love to procreate not only a family but a whole life around it. It doesn’t serve the purpose of Love, it serves the purpose of practicality. The irrationality features in when we mourn our incomplete love. Human folklore claims that the most romantic love is that love which is incomplete. Romance then is truly a glorification of attachment as Love in its essence doesn’t have an opening slot for failure, and we believe it to be love, also known as Irrationality. Of course then, the failure of apparent love must be the epitome of Romance. Mourning the failure to its highest peak we try to live in the romanticism of life in the realm of our phenomenological reality. Love is Love. Romance. Family. Friendship. Its all Love. The only thing that separates the material romance, family and friendship from romantic love, familial love and friendly love is that material love sticks to labels, sticks to shapes that society forms for it and genuine romantic, familial and friendly love don’t have boundaries amongst themselves. It’s not restricted or bound. It’s abstract, it seeps into pores and it composes the note of a song, the air in the atmosphere, the drop in the ocean and the silent flutter of the blissful heart. Its open and its true, the spirit rises and glows, the essence is Gold and its only label is “Love is Love.”

Liberty

“A Loveless Life is an escape for liberty.” Its so liberating to love life, to feel enthusiasm and joy, to positively anticipate your future. There is so much clarity in positive thought. The Unknown doesn’t have a foreboding, negative connotation to it. It could be an exciting adventure. The faith that comes along with positive thought allows you to escape the fear of failure, heartbreak, loneliness, depression, anger, angst, hatred, poverty, addiction and all those necessary evils of life. The reason I call them necessary evils is that they are required for us to grow, learn and progress. If a phoenix didn’t grow old and invite its own death by bursting into flames it would deprive itself of the rare opportunity it has to grow from its ashes. To be reborn is to be equipped again with more strength than one had at the time of their previous birth. Is it not then befitting to present bigger stones to pick than before? That’s sustenance. The birth and rebirth opportunity provided by Bhrama, the chance of death by Shiva are the reasons for Vishnu to preserve all that Bhrama and Shiva gathered. What use is the painstaking yet wondrous touch of Bhrama to create an embryo and the arduous gruesome yet beautifully victorious efforts of Shiva to fill up the graves if Vishnu won’t nourish and cherish what conspires between Life and Death and Death and Life? Having faith is knowing that Bhrama will give us the opportunity, that Shiva will come to our rescue when a boulder drops on our path and Vishnu will keep us safe and sheltered while we step forward and give us the endurance to survive with Glory. The three together signify the chant of wholeness and oneness. ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पुर्णमुदच्यते पूर्णश्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥ ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ ॐ “Om, That is Full, This also is Full, From Fullness comes that Fullness, Taking Fullness from Fullness, Fullness Indeed Remains. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.” The call of the universe precedes and follows the call of oneness. The universe is calling for Creation, Destruction and Preservation to come forth as one. If only we had faith, preserving the exuberance of positive thought would be child’s play almost as natural as breathing.

The other side of the world.

You and I,
Have long since signed
This pact of life
To find the other in the whispers of life.

You and I,
Walk the Roads of life
In spoken silences
To find the calm of the hushed winds of the night.

You go your way,
I'll hold you soon,
I'll catch up with you on the other side of the world
Because you and I,
Signed this pact for life.

Caught Sunlight In My Palms

There's the sand under my toes,
Walking by the sea's flow.
I see you coming towards me
And then you're standing by me.

You've caught my sunlight in your palm
While we stroll along the shores.
You've caught that smile playing by my lips,
And the tingles rushing through my finger tips
With the sunlight you caught in your palms.

Let us run into the ocean's cold
Because I'll have your hand to hold.
I want to swim with you in the sea,
Its where I want to be.

You've caught the sunlight in your palms
Whether its light or dark, its in my heart,
Because while I rest in your arms
I've caught the sunlight in my palms.

Release.

Release.

I used to be alive. I don't know what I am now. A mere existence? I feel like I'm living in the shadows of my own life. Giving in to the monotony of what mankind let manifest.

There's a restlessness within me that needs no soothing but open spaces to let go, to run, to seize! To jump into the arms of the wild, to allow the prowess of the limbs of the lioness to grasp at the manes of her passion, to embody the fire in her eyes and the spirit in her soul. Its been too long, laying dormant letting the restless winds howl, allowing the hunger in my throat to burn And the glint in my eyes to flash. There's been silence for far too long, a pressure that's blocked the caves and a wave threatening to break the craggy parched rocks.

The Devil in me hasn't had the chance to cause chaos and release me to my open stride. To release me from the architecture d corporal symphony and into the wilderness where my heart reigns.

'Yes I've tamed you for far too long haven't I?' I purr at the danger waiting to flood my abode. In response I succumb to the pleasures of its feral snarl, guttural at its best. 'You need to prowl,' My voice tempts its core. I caress its throbbing veins and whisper close to its puckered up ears, 'Release.'

Lucky

When I was younger I never understood how adults were they way they are. When I was slightly stupider I thought they were smart. Then I grew up and realized I wasn’t smart back in the day.

I was still in the process of growing up when I started seeing it, but I brushed it off as me being inexperienced, not knowing enough about life. I made excuses, the way sometimes we all do. It had to stop someday though, right? It did. Exactly 5 days ago. I spent the evening at an aunt’s house, introducing a friend of their age to them. Not really a “normal” situation. All the same, that evening I saw a stark naked truth staring me in the face and it took all the self control I had to hold in my dangerously foul mouth and tear the man in question into tiny little pieces aiming at his weakest spots and force him to face his own truth. Instead, I waited till it reached boiling point, till the effort made its way up from my feet, consumed me and poured up to my head and, get this, I cried.

Laugh, I’m laughing as I read this because really who would think that such an intensely harsh contemplation would lead to tears. At least they were tears of frustration.

He was condescending, he was needling me to react, to fight back or fight for myself. I frankly don’t care which of the two it actually was. Somewhere in my head that voice whispered to me and said, “This is what he wants. Don’t give it.” It’s been whispering for a while now. “They want you to prove yourself. Repeatedly. See it.” That voice even pleaded but I didn’t pay heed until that moment when I realized that nothing would ever be enough, I would always be just a little girl. Pretending not to be one.

I was getting into the swimming pool last week, this small 11 year old girl walked out of the changing room dressed in a halter neck and tiny shorts walked up to the mirror, opened her purse and put on lipstick with utmost perfection. That night I felt like I was that small girl to them. I realized I would always be.
When we grow up, we forget what it’s like to be younger. Tough luck for the ones who are younger right? We get so tamed by our thoughts, we get so caught up in this tiny little box that we forget to look beyond. It’s an unfortunate thing that happened to this current generation of adults. No one showed them how to look beyond. That lack of teaching doesn’t even allow them to change. They think they’re mature, which with all due respect, to what they’ve been exposed to they are. But how do they see your maturity when yours goes beyond a level they can hardly begin to comprehend? You’re different, you’re better equipped, you’re lucky. I was angry that night. Today, I’m lucky. I escaped that damage. I grew up in a wider world, with endless horizons, with possibilities instead of probabilities, with profound skies and far beyond.

For the Rest of your Life...

Do you ever truly grow into the person you're going to be for the rest of your life or is it just a stream of constant phases that roll in like a wave and retreat after touching the shores?

I remember being a person who was hot tempered, angry, unhappy and downright negative to be around. Never really happy with life, frowns and grimaces. I remember that changing too. Two years of Yoga got that one. I also remember thinking, "This is who I am always going to be." And then that changed.

Two years of yoga gave me more than that though, it taught me something. It taught me about growth, not personal or spiritual growth because right now I feel like too much of an amateur to distinguish between the two, but yes growth. Situations arise, you swim through them and when you resurface you're not alone. Attached to you is a strength you didn't have before. Sometimes the strength is your knowledge of survival, sometimes its a new found faith and sometimes its something that surprises you with it's sheer novelty. The beauty of these strengths stun you into a disbelieving silence that almost always in turn, strengthen your faith.

Here comes the thought, "The person I'm finally going to be..."

Wait..! There was still more to come.

My next lesson was that of reason and causation. Nothing happens without a reason, you just have to figure out what the reason is. Once you go through doubting the world, doubting yourself and then eventually doubting God, questioning religion and faith you hopefully get lucky like I did and learn to see past the invisibility cloak your faith has been wearing and embrace whatever you see and find yourself at the doorstep of something new yet again.

After that phase I thought again, "This is who I'm going to be for the rest of my life." Alas, wrong again!

Surety and complacency. This is what came to me while sitting in the red glow of my lava lamp, Iron and Wine music wafting through the air, bouncing off my mirror and coming back to touch me. I was once sure that spiritually I was growing, but I began to wonder if it was my intellect growing. My intellect seemed to be battling with confusion, because if I had reached my spiritual self there would be no room for confusion in the heart of constancy.

I asked my mentor, "Growth or phase?"

She said, "Is not continuous movement from one phase to another growth? Then are the not the same? If you remain still and passive you stagnate."

I thought, just like I had so many times before, life is growth, complacency is stagnation, stagnation is decay and finally, decay is death.

Searching for more, i sought for more and found from the mind of a Guru, "You are either depending on what you believe.. like the light which is a particle or a wave, depending on how it is viewed."

I got to thinking again, Light is constant, not complacent, like growth. And Waves change, progress, like growth. So then does it really matter if you finally grow into who you are going to be for the rest of your life or go through a stream of phases that roll in like a wave and retreat after touching the shores? The person you are going to be depends on whether you chose to grow or to stagnate. You could chose to live with only the growth already achieved or imbibe the waves of escalation. If you chose the latter ,you chose to grow into the person you're going to be for the rest of your life, you're going to be Progress. If not then it wouldn't really matter because a lack of Progress is Stagnation, and Stagnation, Is Death.