Wednesday, November 13, 2013

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.”

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

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.