We perceive real Power as an external artefact to be acquired; when in reality it is a journey which begins from the inside with an internal awareness and acceptance of oneself.
Seeking Power to overcome Insecurity
Our search for power stems from our fear of insecurity and anxiety. We need to protect ourselves from the pain which could arise from the unforeseen circumstances we may encounter. We amass wealth, build the right contacts, develop expertise and so on. All with the intention of gaining power over our unpredictable circumstances. We need to feel we are masters and not victims.
But the more we try to avoid our helplessness through the amassing of power, the more our helplessness and insecurity grows. We become isolated in our large mansions and offices; fearful of everything and everybody. We do…
We are witnessing the world becoming ‘Hard’. Right wing extremist beliefs are emerging stronger in nation after nation; even in the so called oldest democracy, the United States of America. We have just seen what happened on Capitol Hill. There could be different reasons for this, however this is an attempt to look at something fundamental which we need to examine in the light of what is taking place in the USA and around the world.
Life is ‘soft’; Death is ‘hard’
We identify with our beliefs. We become our beliefs. They give us certainty. We can no longer live with uncertainty and the greyness of…
Money is a complex reality that shapes not only one’s perspective of the world and its people, but also one’s inner world and its values.
We sense the need for money at all times but especially when we are struggling to survive or when we are striving to make our fantasies real. Otherwise for the rest of the time we take money for granted. It is just there like the air we breathe. We need the air inasmuch as we need the money. They are an essential part of our lives whose value is realised only by their absence.
A man-made construct
But what is money. Is it just a currency note? And what is the value of this piece of paper? Its size is so small that…
Our lives vacillate between emotions that we like and are attached to and emotions that we are uncomfortable with and try to avoid. So we will preen with pride when someone praises us and recoil with hurt when someone criticises us. We will experience a high when we get what we want and a terrible low when we lose what we have. We seem to be buffeted and pulled asunder by strong emotions. Victims of mood swings. We identify with our emotions. We become our emotions.
It is normal to experience feelings, like anxiety, which make us uncomfortable. But trying…
This is another one of those paradoxes of life.
Being in the Flow
When our focus is on the externalities of life, more often than not we seem to be doing something which we don’t really enjoy doing. We are doing it to achieve the externalities of wealth, status and fame. In such a situation we seem to be continuously running a race comparing ourselves with others and struggling to do better. There is a lot of effort. We struggle to go faster and faster but we realise that we can’t cope. We burn out. We seem to be always going slower than the rest. Going fast is perceived as going slow.
But…
We, very often, consciously or unconsciously live life linearly, solving problems through logical processes while prodding our intellect to understand life through reducing it to its parts and then trying to put them together in different patterns to try and make sense of it all. But Life is a Paradox.
A Paradox is ‘a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth’.
We need to junk logic to experience the meaning of a Paradox. Here are a few Paradoxes. There are more which will be addressed later.
“Don’t Change” and Change occurs
As we grow we are continuously…
We are benumbed by the inhumanity we see in the world today. We have become brutal beasts. Women are treated as chattels. Mauled and burnt at will. Presidential debates have devolved into verbal violence resembling brawls in a bar. Society’s boundaries of respect have all but collapsed. We have regressed to the way of the jungle. What is it that makes us relinquish all decency and propriety!
We have overemphasised outcomes to be achieved and not placed enough importance on the means to achieve them. So even if one has to resort to corrupt means to attain one’s objective it…
We have taken a wrong turn. We are accelerating away from Nature rather than towards Nature.
Everything begins with the philosophy of life which one holds, because it determines how one sees life and therefore acts accordingly.
The Machine Metaphor
Since the time of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries the universe has been viewed as a machine which favoured the manipulation and exploitation of nature. Nature was seen as an object to be used for man’s utility and having no intrinsic value of its own. During this period there were a slew of discoveries which resulted in innovations like the steam engine, and which ultimately led to the Industrial Revolution 1.0. The fire essential to…
We often fail to choose the uncomfortableness which life offers us. We fight against it. We rail against it. But we hardly ever choose to accept it. For instance we may have been born into a family which did not have the wherewithal to satisfy our needs and desires while we were growing up. We resisted the situation we found ourselves in and the more we resisted the more our angst persisted. We blamed our family even though they tried their best to satisfy our whims and fancies. Even after becoming adults the rancour remained. We continued blaming our family…
More often than not we judge others by the actions they take or the behaviour they indulge in, while we judge ourselves by our inner motives.
We judge others by what we see and experience while we judge ourselves by what others cannot see. We tend to rationalise and justify all our actions and behaviour to protect the image we have of ourselves. In this way we build a self-righteous wall around us from which we can continuously judge and condemn others while we bask in our inner self-praise for all that we do. We need to feel better than the rest.
For instance we may pride ourselves in doing acts of charity like visiting the sick. But when we sit by the bedside of a…
Conrad Saldanha
Writer, Trainer, Mentor, Educationist and Consultant.
