"I have learned" - by Omer B. Washington

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.
I’ve learned that no matter how much I care,
some people just don’t care back.
I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust
and only seconds to destroy it.
I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your life
but who you have in your life that counts.
I’ve learned that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes.
After that, you’d better know something.
I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself
to the best others can do,
but to the best you can do.
I’ve learned that it’s not what happens to people,
It’s what they do about it.
I’ve learned that no matter how thin you slide it,
there are always two sides.
I’ve learned that you should always have loved ones with loving words.
It may be the last time you’ll see them.
I’ve learned that you can keep going
long after you think you can’t.
I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done
When it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.
I’ve learned that there are people who love you dearly,
but just don’t know how to show it.
I’ve learned that sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn’t give me the right to be cruel.
I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.
I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to
doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.
I’ve learned that no matter how good a friend is,
they’re going to hurt you every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.
I’ve learned that it isn’t always enough to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.
I’ve learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken,
the world doesn’t stop for your grief.
I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.
I’ve learned that just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.
And just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.
I’ve learned that sometimes you have to put the individual
ahead of their actions.
I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.
I’ve learned that no matter the consequences,
those who are honest with themselves go farther in life.
I’ve learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours
by people who don’t even know you.
I’ve learned that even when you think you have no more to give,
when a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help.
I’ve learned that writing,
as well as talking,
can ease emotional pains.
I’ve learned that the people you care most about in life
are taken from you too soon.
I’ve learned that it’s hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice
and not hurting people’s feelings and standing up for what you believe.
I’ve learned to love
and be loved.
I’ve learned…

I kept on thinking and thinking and thinking to find out what to do eventually....
Then i saw a man who was doing and doing and doing to find out what to think eventually....
i am a gyan yogi and he is a karm yogi.
He is my father.
Both of us have lessons for each other.
"Think like a man of Action, Act like a man of thought."

‎"For material prosperity....be always dissatisfied.
for spiritual prosperity.... be always satisfied.
for both.....be dissatisfied during the day and fully satisfied while going to sleep."

THE "16-WHAT" QUIZ

Want to know yourself? Take a diary and a pen and try to answer these 16 questions in as many words as you deem fit...

1.       Who are you? (Don’t just name yourself, rather define yourself)

2.       What are you?

3.       What do you need?

4.       What do you want?

5.       What do you love?

6.       What do you hate?

7.       What is your greatest strength?

8.       What is time?

9.       What is your greatest weakness?

10.   What is your idea about love?

11.   What is your idea about God?

12.   What is your idea about life?

13.   What is your idea about death?

14.   What, in your opinion, is human life supposed to be all about?

15.   What are you more….a “heart person” or a “brain person”?

16.   What would you be doing today if you were to die tomorrow?

GOD BLESS YOU.

TOLERANCE VS ACCEPTANCE : NAIVITY VS WISDOM

I was once bitten by a mad dog....starved and filthy and ugly. so obviously i had to take all the anti rabies injections. every time i used to go for those injections i used to say to the nurse......goddamn that bludy idiot dog....what the hell did i do to it? cud it not get anyone else to bite? WHY ME...?  the nurse said something that i already knew..."o c'mon, it is itself infected with rabies that makes the dogs aggressive and they are forced to bite. they dont distinguish. sometimes they bite themselves too."
while i was returning home, her words about an obvious fact were echoing in my head and then it suddenly dawned upon me like.....BINGO...THAAAAAT'S IT. i realised that our human society is also a jungle having all sorts of human-animals. we have cunning foxes, creepy snakes, domineering lions, opportunistic hyenas, funny monkeys, mediocre sheeps, solitary scorpions...........the list goes on. i call this human biodiversity. now, if i am walking in a jungle and i find a snake, a poisonous one, what will i do? I WONT BLAME THE SNAKE FOR BEING POISONOUS AND AGGRESSIVE. it is what god made it. i wont have that complaint even if it bit me. all i wud say then wud be..."o hell....I SHUD HAVE BEEN BE MORE CAUTIOUS." i wud also not go into a chronic state of depression and guilt as to......"o my god.....i am such a careless person.....i am a fool....i am good for nothing....etc etc..."
SO WHAT WILL I BE THINKING IN THAT MOMENT...?
i will be thinking that the snake bit me BECAUSE.........it bit me. THAAAAAAT'S IT. full stop. period. i cannot blame the snake. i cannot blame myself. all i can do is to be a bit more cautious in the future. KNOW beforehand as to WHAT i am dealing with.....and then think, expect and behave accordingly.
Hence, i took the whole idea and superimposed it in my behaviour towards people around me. I found that many a times i have tried to kiss snakes and pat hungry lions.....and obviously had disastrous consequences. No matter how absurd it may seem to u now, trust me, we all do it. Hence, i concluded, that in future if i am dealing with a snake, and it is indispensable, i will maintain a safe distance. If i have a rabbit, i will pat it, kiss it, cuddle it in my lap and shower all my love on it. I also realised that until then i have had a sense of tolerance to the way people were. Now i had acceptance.....the way i had acceptance for the way any animal was. what's the difference? well, if i were to be tolerant towards the animals, it would mean that even after knowing that i have a snake with me upfront, i continue to complain about the way it is, i continue to kiss it, continue getting bitten by it, and yet, somehow, manage to live with all this.....this is tolerance. Once i know that it is a snake.....i wud accept it to be the way it is....(poisonous and lethal) coz that's the way IT IS .....that's the way god made it and wants it to be........and,hell, i will surely keep a safe distance. It is up to me to figure out a way to deal with a particular type of person standing in front of me. It is MY responsibility.
This concept also helped me in forgiving people for their apparently "unforgivable sins". I also found that in order to forgive others, first I had to learn to forgive myself. I found that in life, whatever happens, just happens, because it has already happened. As today's young generation says in their obscene slang..."Shit happens". :)
TODAY......I AM AT PEACE.....WITH MYSELF......AND WITH EVERYONE AROUND ME.....HUMAN OR ANIMAL.

The road not taken

"Standing at the


Crossroads of life


With beliefs shattered


Faith shaken


I wonder which one


is supposed to be


“the road not taken”…"

"Hopes are shattered


Dreams have paled


I am defeated


But I haven't failed


From the ashes of my bones


I take a new birth


You won’t get me Hades,


I WILL walk the earth."

"Inside of you lies the best Google..."

"All differences and diversities are superficial. Fundamentally, everything is the same thing."

"Memories were meant to fade....They were designed like that for a reason...If you have ever loved someone truly, you would know."

MAKING A TIME TABLE DOESN’T WORK FOR ME

At some point of time or other, most of us, if not all, have made an attempt to manage our time by following the strategy of making a time table to deal with the heavy backlog of work that got accumulated over weeks, or even months, (courtesy our eternal tendency of procrastination……) and then subsequently swearing on the purest things we know to stick to that time table religiously, yet failing in doing so within a couple of days, or at the most a week. I won’t make conclusive claims about others but I myself used to do this. Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the volume of work that I had to do, or after getting exposed to some strongly motivating factor (like a self help book, video or a movie), I used to rush to my table, sit down, pen down all that I thought I had to do, divide the work at hand with the time available and after a number of “presumptive calculations” I used to get what all I was to do on a daily basis. Taking a “firm” decision for the time I would wake up in the morning to the time I will sleep, I had everything penned down. Utterly satisfied that I was on the right path I felt so relaxed as if half of the work was already done.” Ehh….i have everything under control….I will achieve what I have set out to achieve.” In the subsequent excitement that followed, in 50% of the cases I couldn’t sleep in the night until at least 2 am, hence waking up at 9 am instead of the “committed” 5-6 am, thus ruining the entire plan at the very beginning and shattering the castle before putting even a single brick in place. After failing miserably in this manner for a number of times, I used to feel …”whjat the heck man, even the time I used for making the time table also got wasted…”….” Its REALLY difficult to make and work on a time table”…..”why the hell am I so lazy…?”…..I am such a born procrastinator….I am good for nothing….hopeless case……and so on so forth, my mind almost always used to get flooded with thoughts of worthlessness and pessimism that further marred my all of the future attempts at time management too. I started seeking help. I talked to quite a good number of people, searched the internet and tried to get whatever help I can from anywhere or anyone. But nothing helped for long. Even when I gave up procrastination and started following my timetable for a considerable length of time, I found that I was even more restless all the time. I lived in the persistent fear of time. “time is running away” “I have this thing to do, then I have that thing also….”…I found that I became a very irritating person to others...somebody who always lived in haste, had no time ever to bathe in the rain or smell the roses. And I finally told myself…”what the hell….! I cannot live like this for ever….” But at the same time I also knew the importance of time. So I started wondering if there was any alternative way for making maximum usage of my time AND that too in a pleasant manner. To get the answer to that question I didn’t ask anyone, I don’t know why, but I just felt that nobody can actually help me. I have to have a tailor made solution. Because somehow I felt that everybody thinks that either they can be happy OR they can be disciplined….that you have to do unpleasant things at times going against your desire. I wanted BOTH….happiness as well as maximum time efficiency. So I meditated over this question. I continued for weeks, every day brooding and meditating over this for at least 1 hour per day and kept on living a chaotic life in the meantime. I have to confess, it was a difficult exercise. But in the end it proved to be worth every minute I spent over it. I used all of my varied knowledge from biology, psychology, neurobiology, philosophy…..whatever and what not…..and eventually I got some important insights.


My father had been a soldier in the Indian armed forces. He used to tell me that one day in a potential Indo-Pak war he got a close brush with death that made him think that there was so much more that he wanted to do but never did because of the “more important” things he had to do. In that very moment, of which he gave me a very detailed and picturesque account, he felt “if I die now, all of those wishes will remain unfulfilled…I cannot die in peace.” ….”Dying in peace is very important. Just like the climax of a movie decides the final verdict of the audience, the type of death we have decides the worthiness of our lives and that whether we lived it the way we were supposed to live or not…” he told me.


Starting from the memory of this incident, I also recollected what I had learned long back that “everyday ought to be lived like a lifetime, considering every sleep to be a little death, and every morning to be a little birth.”


Second important insight that I got one day while meditating was….you must stop racing against time because nobody can race with time and that is because ….time is not moving. Time is still. The past, present and the future coexist in the creation. It is you who moves from past, to present to future. As a matter of fact, there is no past and no future except in your head. God created time. Human mind created the distinction of past, present and future to designate what he has finished doing, what he is doing and what he wants to do ahead, respectively....like a progressive sense of becoming from what you have been. God created time like a mason creates a building….brick by brick……second by second. That was the best possible way…..to give man 1 second at a time so that he can make maximum use of it. “One second at a time.” That’s all you have, no matter who you are. Thus, “There is never “enough” time and there is never “scarcity” of time.” Because all anybody can have is one second at a time. And building from each such second, brick by brick, the building of your “lifetime” is built. The way a mason is only worried about putting the one brick he has in his hand at the proper place in the right manner, not about the whole wall, similarly, “You take care of the seconds, minutes and hours shall take care of themselves.” Stop thinking about the future, stop thinking whether the wall that is going to be built will look like what, would be stable or not, etc etc. Just BE IN THE MOMENT. Choose the right bricks in every second. The wall WILL be perfect. It also follows from this that time cannot be managed. We don't have that power. We can only manage ourselves according to time....and how can we do that?....by "being" in one second at a time.


One of the flaws, inter se, of making a time table is the fundamental presumption that you can predict the future…..because only then you can plan for it….isn’t it? We all make a speculation about the future and then plan accordingly. And one of the major reasons why time tables fail is because either something takes longer than we “expected” or shorter, or some “unforeseen” circumstance or person ruins our plan. If it is a person, we are forced to be a little rude to them, or even if we tell them with utmost humility about our commitment, after a couple of such incidents, he STILL feels offended and LESS VALUED. In either of the cases, you don’t feel good either. It doesn’t look like God wanted us to plan for the future, otherwise why would he have kept the future out of our reach, knowledge and accessibility? I am quite convinced that if He wanted us to plan for the future, He wouldn’t have followed the “one second at a time” model. But he did. So that’s a lesson.


We all also know that one of the major reasons of many people’s failures to follow their plan is the tendency for procrastination. But why do we procrastinate? Have you ever thought about it? Is it because we are lazy…? Is that it? Then where does that laziness go when you have just a couple of days left for an exam or when you have something really important to do…? The degree of procrastination is directly influenced by the sense of urgency one has for a particular task. If u knew, and could always be aware, that this moment is the only moment, this moment is all that you have, and that in the next moment you can die, you will be so absorbed, in fact “consumed”, by that moment that there won’t be any possibility for procrastination. I call this “time consciousness”. Further, people holding higher positions of power and authority almost always have a plan and almost always follow it successfully. They succeed and you don’t because they know that if they fail, a hell lot of things can be ruined. They have greater “Answerability”, greater “Accountability”. You don’t have any. Say, if you have decided that you will wake up early in the morning, your “subconscious” knows that there is nothing at stake. So that even if you don’t, “heavens are not going to fall”. And when in the morning your conscious, and the promises it had made the previous night, are both weak due to the trance of sleep, your sub-conscious takes over and unknowingly you shut down your alarm clock for sleeping “just five more minutes” that almost always gets stretched to 2-3 hours.


Further, I don’t think we should or “can” make targets. I feel we should rather prioritize the tasks, then simply take them on, one by one, and don’t stop till they are all finished, after which take a rest, make another list and go ahead again. If something out of our control interrupts, no anxiety….just relax….when the disturbance goes, get back and finish the job. Bur what to do when I know that there is something that I need to do, something that is on the list, but I don’t feel like doing it? Valid question, isn’t it? But I have also observed that any process/pursuit becomes arduous when one has the “end” or "target” in mind that manifests either as the impatience of reaching that end or as the fear of facing it. Have we all not found that the journey towards an unknown destination always appears to be longer and more tiring than the journey back home? This may be because “while going, the mind is looking for the destination all along the journey”. It is gripped by the thoughts of the ‘end’ making the process appear relatively longer. On the other hand, while coming back, the mind is sure of reaching the appropriate and known place and hence is relaxed. That’s why I said not to make targets. But if I don’t make targets where will I go? Which direction shall I proceed?


You don’t need a direction. If you have to take a journey in your car in the night from your home to a neighboring city that is, say, 500 Kms away, you complete that journey with the help of your car’s headlights that can illuminate only may be up to two hundred yards or so at a time. That’s it. Likewise, in life, God has given you 1 second at a time which comes and goes immediately. NOW it has come, NOW it’s gone as the next one has come. This is your 200 yards. That is the limit of direction you need. Make full use of your each and every second and you WILL reach your final destination.


But wouldn’t it be better if I’d know what my destination (to be read “destiny”) is?


No, because your destination and your destiny lie in the safest of all places – the future. If you “know” the future, there is no future because future, by definition, is the unknown.






Does this mean I am not the master of my own destiny?






No, you are still the master of your own destiny.






But how?






When you have to go to the neighboring city it is you who decides which city you are going to. Similarly, the moment your mind ‘conceives’ a desire from the abysmal depths of your soul’s cravings, it creates a sort of “shockwave” of desire, a sort of command to the entire creation. In that very moment your desired future gets imprinted in the space-time fabric as a "potential happening". Hence, the entire creation starts aligning in a manner such that you get all the appropriate things at appropriate times (something that appears as beginner’s luck). To make it easier to handle, God did not give you more than one second at a time, so that when things are happening to you , you could manage happening back to them i.e. make full use of everything that comes into your way at the rate of one second at a time, so as to ensure maximum efficiency. So, after sending the ‘desire wave’ once, start living one second at a time. Stop wondering about the destination or the results, or else only things will be happening to you but you won’t be able to happen back to them, thus disrupting the equilibrium and distancing the very destination that you yourself called upon. This is because the successful arrival/manifestation of your desired destination needs the equilibrium to be maintained throughout. So, from now on, if you really want to have something, anything, want it once and for ever. Don’t ever want it again or long for it. Just enjoy the journey and know for sure (i.e. ‘believe’) that your destination is coming to you and will continue to do so as long as you maintain the equilibrium. In order to do that, love the process, love the journey, live every second fully, and by that I mean make full use of all that you have got in every second. Give “your” best. Don’t compare your temporal results with others. You may be doing better than many in a relative sense. But remember God dispenses justice and bestows the successes and riches in a very different manner and that is an esoteric truth that very few have been able to comprehend.






Kindly elaborate….






(...to be continued in next post)

FEW RULES FOR LOVE

Never chase love. Love is like a butterfly. The more you run after it, the more it will fly away from you, the more actively you pursue true love, the more elusive it will become. Rather, stand still, hold back, have patience, enjoy the beauty of the garden, and you will find love to come and sit on your shoulder miraculously all by itself…..just like a butterfly.


Once you have love, do not hold on to it. You keep moving at your own pace. Know that the butterfly is sitting on your shoulder, be proud of it, be excited about it, but don’t try to hold it in your hand, else it will fly away again. Trust me, all beloveds are plain stupid.


Never ever let your loved one know how much you love him or her, except for using your eyes and deeds. But be there for them whenever they need you and let them ask explicitly for it. Don’t distance yourself too much either. Keep quiet and maintain an air of unpredictability flowing over a ground of predictability. Remember that love thrives on surprise, amusement, uncertainty, pain of distance and fear of loss. Never ever be taken for granted.


As for life, so for love; “live” the moment, “keeping in mind” the future, rather than the other way round.


Greater the number of times you have sex with your loved one, lesser the charm will become. Hold back. Enjoy the pain of craving as much as you can before you let go of all hold bars. Remember that sexuality is the ultimate culmination of love on the physical plane. As many times you see the climax of a suspense/ thriller movie, as much of aversion you develop for it.


If you want to get out of a relationship, don’t try to be a bad person so that your loved one starts hating you and the relation breaks. You don’t need to make it ugly. Instead, have indifference towards your beloved and the relation both. Remember, the opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference.


As for life, so for love. If you want anything to be valued, create a scarcity of it……scarcity, not absence.


Do not pin your sense of worthiness on your beloved’s certification of it, or, for that reason, anybody’s certification of it.


Do not expect anything….anything at all. No matter how difficult it might seem at first, if you truly love somebody, it’s very easy.


Do not love for a reason. Love for the sake of loving only. Enjoy the process, neither the causation nor the end. Yet keep admiring your beloved for as many things as you can. Give them a sense of worthiness associated with your presence in their lives.


In the moments of agony and in the moments of ecstatic joy, remember…”this too shall pass”.

THE POWER OF LOVE

Years ago a John Hopkin's professor gave a group of graduate students this assignment: Go to the slums. Take 200 boys, between the ages of 12 and 16, and investigate their background and environment. Then predict their chances for the future.

The students, after consulting social statistics, talking to the boys, and compiling much data, concluded that 90 percent of the boys would spend some time in jail.

Twenty-five years later another group of graduate students was given the job of testing the prediction. They went back to the same area. Some of the boys - by then men - were still there, a few had died, some had moved away, but they got in touch with 180 of the original 200. They found that only four of the group had ever been sent to jail.

Why was it that these men, who had lived in a breeding place of crime, had such a surprisingly good record? The researchers were continually told: "Well, there was a teacher..."

They pressed further, and found that in 75 percent of the cases it was the same woman. The researchers went to this teacher, now living in a home for retired teachers. How had she exerted this remarkable influence over that group of children? Could she give them any reason why these boys should have remembered her?

"No," she said, "no I really couldn't." And then, thinking back over the years, she said musingly, more to herself than to her questioners: "I loved those boys...."

Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind;
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet;
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them;
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true;
To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best;
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own;
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future;

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile;
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others;
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear; and too happy to permit the presence of trouble;
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds;

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

A call from heart for the worshiper of truth and non violence

With swords in every hand,

and hate in every heart,

with vengeance in every eye,

mother India is tearing apart,

with truth getting blurred and

darkness seeping through,

O "bapu" of india,

this weeping heart calls for u,

come and teach us again,

lessons long forgotten,

I cant see this insanity,

and the pain thus begotten,

bloods of ancestors,

the sacrifices they made,

the fruits of freedom we got,

have made our memories fade….

come now o father !

your mother needs you,

come now o father!

Your sons need you,

come now o father !

before it is too late,

come now o father !

before my country bleeds to fate…

-ritwick ; 02nd oct 2010

"Always abandon a discussion that has transformed itself from "what is right" to "who is right"... as it will never lead to a meaningful conclusion."

"As much as I have seen, observed and analysed, the biggest problem of our times is everyone is trying to combat fire with fire and hence creating even more fire. In most of the cases people who are fighting for the noblest of causes, somehow, end up causing them even more. If properly comprehended it is very obvious but then, wisdom evaporates in a hot head....and now-a-days every body.....EVERYBODY....is a hot head."

"We humans have a tendency of doing anything only due to two reasons. Either we love doing it, or we fear the consequences of not doing it. Most of us follow the latter reason most of the times." 

"Whenever I find anything that seems difficult, I name it interesting."

"I don't have any weaknesses, only imperfections."