You have come this far and braved over hundred pages. I do not have words to thank you. However, if you ask me, what I would truly like to say to you; with all simplicity, innocence and humility; is this small thing – Do very bravely and compassionately, accept this world, you live in, as a colossal landscape of Grief. After this acceptance, internalize grief and then very innocently accept that there is only one way to journey the landscape and that is, the Artistry of Playfulness with Consciousness.
This highly aware and witness-mode playfulness, while journeying the landscape of Grief, is what evolved and empowered humans have prescribed since over 3000 years; in Oriental philosophy. Modern science and its breakthroughs of human consciousness as well as reality, also corroborate this singular utility and worth of this Artistry of Playfulness with Consciousness and life-living. In ancient Indian philosophical traditions, this artistry of playfulness of self was called Leela, which literally means enactment of a conscious behavior-action, at the theatre of life-living, with personal inputs of playfulness.
I have faith in you that you must have understood me and my innocence. I am sure; you must have also internalized what I mean about playfulness. We have talked about it earlier that our brain-milieu interactions create the ‘Will’ in us and we only ‘Own’ them and react. Conscious Playfulness negates this fixed destiny of average human. It calls for holistic acceptances of Reality. It seeks to internalize and ingrain in our consciousness that every reality is Information and our consciousness is also Field or Landscape of Information. The artistry of conscious playfulness is all about consciously changing the attributes and properties of the Information of our field of consciousness. This creates alternative and novel cognitions as the field is redesigned. This in turn enables us to have novel and alternative experiences, which truly makes us attain actual richness and wellness.
I am confident that you have understood this simple mechanism and process. Therefore, the rest of the eBook is not required. I simply conclude this eBook by mentioning some of the easy steps and ways to facilitate this artistry of playfulness in life-living. I look forward to your interaction with me as you may feel personalizing this talk we are having, by writing to me. We can talk on issues and inquisitions you feel to share with me, to lend better utility and effectiveness to our interactions on issues of grammar of live and poetry of living.
Before I begin to mention about the steps; do kindly allow me to share a personal experience with you. This I am sharing with you not to exhibit any undue conceit but to simply present a frame of reality, as I have experienced and used it to grow better in my journey so far.
Around 20 years back, I once visited my ancestral village. I enquired about the well-being of all and I was told that an old woman, who had served my grandfather well and was respected by our family for her contributions; was desperately looking for me. She was over 80 years old, ailing and poor. I visited her to show my respects. She was weak and could not walk well but she was exhilarated to see me. She told me that she was looking for me as she had committed to the village deity that she would make an offering at the temple in my name. For a moment, I was unsettled as I thought, she would seek a few thousand rupees and I had only few hundred in my pocket. I in no way wished to deny her demand. I asked her, how much money would be enough for her to perform what she wished. She was silent for few seconds, lowered her face and uttered softly in a voice that manifested her uneasiness with her demand. She said, things could not be done in less than fifty rupees (around a dollar then). I promptly gave her hundred rupees. I could see tears of happiness lining in her old eyes. She blessed me in many ways, till I took her leave.
I learnt from her and this experiences two simple realities – first learning was, realities are always multidimensional and we must learn to consciously feel and accept realities from others’ perspectives too. I could understand; the desire and fulfillment of the need of merely fifty rupees, fetched the old woman a joy, which I could not match, even when this hundred rupees I gave her would be lying there in my pocket for days. Secondly; I understood, it is more profitable to invest in smaller expectations as they fetched larger bliss and utility. I am not saying it with any malice or ill-will but the fact remains that I have invested big moneys as well as loads of affection and compassion in many of my relationships in my 54 years of life but they are still dissatisfied with me and have never shown any happiness and appreciation; less alone the gratitude and blessings.
Since this incident, I made it a point to repeat this Small Investment routine with those, whom I didn’t know or were only casual acquaintances. Again, I say it with humility and no malice to anyone that in my life, I have received blessings, happiness reciprocation, kind sentiments and spectacular compliments from uncountable persons like shopkeepers, housekeeping staff, hawkers on the streets, casual contacts, laborers, acquaintances in online world, those, I never knew they knew me and even unknown readers. I have invested nothing big; at times small amount of money and mostly good behavior, with childlike humor and innocence. It is a simple reality that most people expect only respectable demeanor and equitable interaction. It may seem magical but most people, who are not in possession of attitudes of moneys and power, have innate sensitivity to sense out simplicity, innocence and sincerity. May be because they are the worst victims of attitudes of rich and powerful people! They even promptly reward you with compliments of the acceptance of your simple overtures. These do not cost anything. Small gestures, a body language of purity of intent, small money with affection and emotions work the magic, which million dollars may never fetch. My humility prohibits me from saying this but I am sharing this with you just to exemplify some shades of novel and alternative experiences of life-living that two sentiments have repeatedly come my way and I am so indebted for that. Many people, for whom I did nothing but only behaved well, have said to me – ‘You should have happened earlier in my life’. Second sentiment, uttered by most is – ‘Do kindly spend a few minutes with me daily’. What investment creates this return worth diamonds? I invest nothing tangible and big. I simply change the state of consciousness of these people by instilling humor, fraternity and respectability. In short time, I stay and connect with them; I consciously try to alter the current Field or Landscape of their Consciousness by introducing the novel attributes and properties of humor and respectability. This alters their current consciousness, which is usually filled with cacophonous elements, as they lead tough lives and routinely face undignified behaviors and attitudes. They easily sense out the harmony-rhythm and feel well. They do not feel the change and its mechanism but internalize this emergence of a novel milieu and its feel, as I merge my consciousness with them; even though only for a short while. They reciprocate it by saying kind words and blessing me. This makes me rich. Believe me; I do it not for returns. I do it as it is the way. It is my subconscious behavior now. I don’t even feel I am doing it. It happens and it makes me realize; it is the way my homeostasis remains optimized.
The primary aspect of the above description is to bring home the reality that we and our lives attain optimal and better wellness and joyfulness when we become conscious and aware of our own deeper self and equally consciously align and relate our live-living with larger field and landscape of Information in the external milieus. This sure is not a new idea. It has been there since over 3000 years. This idea is now more relevant. We list out some steps and ways, which may lead us to this idealism –
- STEP 1 – We need to understand and accept that in all aspects of life-living, the element of harmony and rhythm is very crucial. That is why it is of paramount importance that we assign attention to Pace of our life and living. We are essentially Information and our consciousness is an emergent reality of complex processing going inside our brain. There are innumerous processes going on inside our body plexus too. They all need to be in an optimal and ideal state of harmony, poise and rhythm. The processes also require some time to emerge and express. This necessitates that we regulate the speed and pace of our daily life routine. The homeostatic requirements need good amount of rest, sleep, leisure for conscious retrospection and thoughtfulness and peaceful processing of all information. In contemporary life-living, let alone adults, even small kids are so busy and are constantly moving from one task to other. Most people are so used to fast pace and unending activities that they cannot sit in leisure and calm state of body-mind for an hour. It may sound ridiculous but it is a reality that most of us do not even know how to eat rightly. Most of us also do not breathe rightly. First, we eat much more than what is ideal for one time meal. Secondly and more importantly, we eat too fast and gulp too big a morsel in one go. Moreover, in modern milieus of high-paced life-living; many of us do not eat our meals or foods in sedentary mode and with people we love. Ideally, we should eat only when we are in calm, composed and happy state. This is necessary because then only we can truly experience optimally the bounties of food. Small portions and small morsel at a time enhances the experiences of tastefulness and satisfaction of eating. In all cultures, there were specific rituals of family gratitude and prayers preceding meals. They were aimed at ensuring that the Field of Consciousness of person having food is optimally zeroed down to holistic processing of Information associated with the food they were eating. This is right and must for homoeostatic idealism. As we have talked earlier; this fast paced life-living, over action-reaction regimen in daily life, continued multi-tasking, et al are very new to human ecosystem. It has happened only in the last few decades. The overall wellness issues have also come up in the same time period, globally. The troubled homeostasis is a reality of recent origin. We sure have to invest in leisure, rest, poise and rhythm.
- STEP 2 – Our brain is probably not innately amenable for multidimensional living. Usually, subconsciously, we are wired to focus only on one aspect of a situation at a time. That probably is some archaic and vestiges of mammalian brain, which optimized its survival. Multiple aspect thoughtfulness comes to us usually after the incident happens, reactions are actualized and we are in retrospection mode. This probably is the cortex part brain processing, which emerged later in the evolution of human species and evolved retrospective and lateral thinking. We need to learn the artistry of lateral as well as vertical thinking to create optimal experiences of a situation. As we have discussed, reality is an information landscape and probabilistic. A reality is packaged with multiple possibilities. That is why we need to align with all possible attributes and properties of this information field to have multidimensional experiences of a singular reality or situation. This is the domain of artists but average person must also attain this facility. It does not come easy and that is why a child must be trained to do so very early in his or her journey. For example, when a child is eating something, he or she must be confronted with the questions like; can he guess how this meal is cooked and what ingredients are there? The child also must be made inquisitive about where and how the ingredients are grown, who grows them and what their lives are like. Etc. The idea is that from early days, a person must evolve a conscious registry of the multidimensionality of a reality and situation. It is for sure, when a person is aware of larger landscape of information, it shall have better prospects of acquiring deeper and more experiences of varied nature. This helps in relationships too. Most people are singular in their attention and focus. They do not accept different aspects of a reality and therefore cannot be open and compassionate about those, who live up with other shades of realities. As we have been discussing all along, novel and alternative experiences are true opulence and therefore, it must be ingrained as part of nurturance for children. It essentially is the mind training domain of parents. They should ensure that a child develops this artistry of being sensitive to and respectful to different aspects and dimensions of a reality, in daily life-living. The inquisitiveness for details and hidden layers of a reality must be inculcated from early childhood. We know, this helps a child grow better and later in life understand reality better. It is an established fact that a true intellectual shall always see something embedded in a reality, which most others cannot.
- STEP 3 – If we have to define one element, which is exclusively human and has evolved in millions of years to create what we are today; it definitely is emotional richness of our thoughtfulness process. Science tells us that emotions are not exclusive to humans. Most of the higher organisms and bigger animals have emotions. In fact, emotions are part and parcel of the mammalian brain or middle brain plexus of information processing. However, what makes them exclusive in humans is the ways humanity has added shades of feelings into it and in beautifully satisfying artistry these feelings create different utilities and worth in life-living. If we look at the massive plexus of neurons as well as those of chemical processes of hormones, we can clearly see how most of our behavior and actions are guided by our emotional response system. As we have discussed Intentionality earlier; we can say that intentionality at cellular levels are expressed and manifested into behaviors and actions, through the neuro-chemical (hormonal) networks, which essentially are shaped up by emotional spectrum of cognitions. This signifies that humans are essentially emotional beings and this is not only a huge asset but also the seat of most troubles. We all know how most people are poor handlers of emotional response to a situation and end up messing up with their feelings. Emotions are defining media of human wellness landscape as they affect the patterns of behavior and actions. Emotions however are very much like salt in a recipe. There is a very thin line of ‘appropriate’ of use of salt. Slightly less salt makes the food uninteresting and boring. Slightly more salt makes the food inedible. Emotional poise is critical to the multidimensionality of experiences. An emotionally instable person has the innate propensity to react disproportionately and awkwardly to a reality or situation. This makes the person aligned to a consciousness, which is devoid of poise and amicability. Emotional stability is a tough situation as it is innately linked to external milieus and their stimuli. In contemporary world, there is larger threat to emotional stability of a person as he or she is constantly faced with destabilizing stimuli from external milieus of society and cultures. As we have talked earlier, the over-contextual individuality vis-à-vis externalities often confuse emotions and therefore, they engender conflicted feelings. Experts have clearly declared that humanity shall grow into more abstractions and higher and instable emotionalism as milieus and life-living becomes more complex and burgeoning human populations create cannibalistic propensities. As we discussed earlier, three processes of Registry, Internalization and Expression of Information are crucial for wellness. In all the three stages, emotions and their sanity-sanctity-poise is the defining element of homeostatic wellness. Most people get so frustrated with their emotional mishandling of situations, especially in relationships that they intentionally or subconsciously turn into a non-emotional person. They get promptly labeled as Narcissist and this in turn engenders more attitudes. Many others have troubles with expressions of emotions; which we know as feelings. The psychologists are happy to name such anomalies as syndromes of populist consumption. This is alarming situation for wellness. Humans cannot and should not disown emotions. If we do that, we actually kill reality as emotions are gateways to experience reality in multidimensionality. Being a non-emotional person, we actually hamper and dissipate our own wellness landscape. Also, artistic expressions of emotions add to the experiences pool of consciousness. That is why it is important that from early days of childhood, all budding kids must be made to learn to know their emotional pathways, be successful in internalizing them with poise and then learn to have beautiful and meaningful expressions of emotional elements. For that to happen, children must be made to stand good with their language proficiency. The parents have this huge role in making a kid understand that more often than not; the insufficiency of language and grammar adds to the confusion about a reality as languages are the core media of how we accept and interpret reality in personal as well as societal spaces. They also must learn as many arts like music, dance, painting, sculpting, acting, etc. If not; at least they should have a taste for them. Music is very critical for wellness of humans. Animals too respond to music as it is aligned to brain waves and introduces the elements of harmony and rhythm in consciousness. Moreover, children must also be practically and theoretically exposed to dramatics and theatrical artistry. In Indian ancient dramatics traditions; there is mention of nine different rasas (shades of feelings) and all of them must be equitably present and expressed consciously in a person’s life-living. These different rasas actually correspond to different hormonal manifestations of emotions within body-brain plexuses. Usually, most people live out only two or three shades of feelings; mostly love (hate), anger and envy. A person with instable emotional registry may even color up love with shades of anger or envy upfront. The poetry of living is in living out all nine rasas and register with clarity, the varied experiences every rasa brings about. We must accept our consciousness as the canvas and emotions as colors. There is specific hormonal physicality assigned to core intentionality of emotions. They are the colors. Emotions paint the canvass and create beautiful and meaningful paintings of realities in life-living and enhance our wellness landscape’s richness. When we paint, care must be taken that we do not smudge the colors (of emotions) and create a bad portrait of reality. We need to accept, our primary purpose, utility and worth is in understanding, taking good care of and enhancing the endowments, our body-brain system is pre-loaded with. Nobody can paint anything if there is no canvas, no colors and understanding of the language of colors. A bad canvas and muddled up colors cannot paint anything beautiful and meaningful.
- STEP 4 – My personal favorite artistry is my humble and stupid experiments with pain and grief. It requires loads of persevered practice to alter an innate cognition of reality and instead, install and infuse an alternative cognition, which not only takes much of the discomforting intensity out of pain and grief but also in some ways, allows a definitive dimension of blissfulness out of pain-grief registry. This process begins by aligning the consciousness to pain-grief in the same way, most people do with God or divinity. God, in a way, is also a cognitive acceptance, which is actualized not in matter or physicality but in cognitive or perceptional landscape of brain states. Therefore, pain and grief is also first accepted as some person. As registry of pain-grief is perceived and installed as a person, the talk begins. I begin to talk with the person of pain and grief. This talk can be silent and verbal, depending upon the situation and personal comfort. Usually, when pain and grief is less intense, there is verbal talk. Silent talks happen when there is intense pain-grief, making it tough for verbal talk to happen. I personally do not speak but sing. I address to my pain-grief with a suitable song and I do it with full flow and demonstrativeness of theatrics to amalgamate the emotions of complete surrender and compassionate exhortations. This unleashes two processes – first, as the pain-grief becomes a person, it is meaningfully externalized from the landscape of my body to someone sitting in front of me. This gives great relief in registry of intensity of pain-grief. Secondly, as the talk begins, the innate focus of brain states and neural plexuses is shifted from processes of painfulness and grieving to intent and content of the talk. This also facilitates emaciation of pain-grief. The process of complete and conscious recapitulation of entire being and self before the person, representing pain-grief is more important. This is what we do with God. We believe that source of all joys and pains is almighty God and whatever God ordains, is his will for my ultimate betterment. This surrender before God and perfect faith in God’s Will installs confidence and courage in most people. The same process happens when we surrender before pain-grief and accept with innocence and humility its ‘Will’. My personal process of surrender involves weeping like a child as I keep singing. The tears never fail me. All body-brain mechanisms have evolved in millions of years to optimize survival and wellness for us. We need to learn to utilize these mechanisms and processes in our life-living. Weeping and crying not only with eyes but with entire body and every speck of consciousness participating in weeping process creates a magic. Essentially; as we have talked repeatedly; we are Fields and Landscapes. If we consciously alter the attributes and properties of this Field or Landscape of Information, which our Consciousness feels and lives out as reality; we can change the cognition or perception of any reality. The spectrum of emotions has been designed to associate with specific motor action of muscles to optimize survival wellness. When we consciously assign a ‘Body’ to emotions and consciously try to alter the morphology of the body, the emotion has fruitful expression and it settles to a novel and alternative registry. This process is the same. It changes the Field and its properties by conscious alteration. This however takes loads of practice. It evolves within and the brain states take its time to create pathways for such processes. As the pathways are created and consolidated, the entire process becomes smooth and takes place in quick time. This sure is nothing new. We all know, it is said that women usually weep and express their grief more frequently and spontaneously than most men and that is why they are considered to have better maneuverability with grief situations than men, who take undue pride in denial of reality of grief. It is some artistry for men to have registry and internalization of feminine sensitivities and succeed in attainment of innocence and simplicity!
- STEP 5 – There is a way of life-living experiencing, which I fear to share as it has the potential to be misunderstood and also create a misgiving about true intent. However, I am sharing it with you as I always believe in your magnanimity, even when I do not trust the efficacy of words to carry true intent. There is a famous couplet in Urdu poetry which says, ‘Dekhiye Meri Pajirayee Ko Ab Aata Hai Kaun, Lamha Bhar Ko Waqt Ki Dehleez Par Ayya Hoon Main.’ It means, let us see, who comes to welcome me as I have come to the doorstep of time just for a moment. The theme of the expression is to insist that life is too short and ephemeral and I have come to the world full of people, only for a very short time. I shall align and relate only with those, who welcome me and meet me with affection and compassion. As another Urdu couplet says, ‘Humsafar Chahiye, Huzoom Nahi; Ik Musafir Bhi Kafila Hai Mujhe (I need a companion, not a crowd; one co-traveler is like a convoy to me)’ This idea is somehow a life-living hypothesis, which may sound like a person is advocating to love only those who love him or her. However, the true idea behind this hypothesis is that life is too short to waste it on those, who are not in the consciousness of assimilation and fraternity. This does not say that I shall not show my compassion and altruistic emotions towards them. However, I shall not align with them in deep and lasting relationship because, they do not have the required consciousness to assimilate and integrate with me. This idea very compassionately and honestly wishes to install the pragmatism of life-living that essentially, relationships are alignment, assimilation and integration between two mutually respecting and harmonious Fields. Bodies aligning with another body are not relationships. Only consciousnesses can align and relate with each other. Those, who do not have the consciousness to respect and integrate with other Fields of consciousnesses, can never ever have the qualification and eligibility of getting ‘related’. If one consciously decides not to align with these people, it is not pride or animosity but basic self-preservation need. Every living being has the ultimate right to avoid all such circumstances, which may lead to its predation. There are people and situations, which actually predate you and your own sense of goodness and wellness. Self-preservation, as primary life-living need, seeks to distance away from such predatory entities. This hypothesis in turn means, first, we need to unlearn the populist perception of loneliness and instead, use this powerful situation as a tool to avoid predation. Secondly, we need to unlearn our old, archaic and populist cultural notions of relationships; like family, blood relationships et al. Only that person is my ‘Family’ and ‘Relative’, who has this eligibility of consciousness to respect others and be in innocence of willful assimilation and integration. This person can be anyone; even one, whom I have never known and may never meet and familiarize with.
- STEP 6 – Human body and mind are huge marvels of nature. For that matter, all bodies and minds of all living being are. Since ages, whether it be philosophy or spiritualism; primary human inquisitiveness always hovered around dynamics of human body-mind and its relationships with realities in external milieus. Since thousands of years, aware and evolved people looked for understanding these basic issues. Contemporary science has unraveled so much now. It was realized since thousands of years and now science confirms it that human body and mind has huge potentials but average person does not use even a fraction of these potentials as they are not aware of them. Human body is marvelous; it needs so little to survive and remain in good shape. In fact, in contemporary cultures, we are over-feeding and over-investing on body. Self-sufficiency for human body to survive and thrive is so easy in contemporary milieus, yet, because of wrong lifestyle choices and bad personal habits, average person has jeopardized it. The body needs little amount of food but the right food. It is a tragedy that culturally, we have been very wrongly trained to accept what our needs are. As it is said, we don’t always need, what we seek. This entire mind training to accept the gamut of our ‘needs’, which we seek in life and invest our precious time, energy and resources to attain, has to be unlearnt. Science helps us in identifying our true needs. It helps by distinguishing between ‘My Need’ and ‘Body-Needs’. Vast majority of what we call and refer to as ‘My Needs’ is not what my body and mind requires for its golden homeostatic wellness, which keeps it fit and fine; bodily and mentally. Science clearly lists out the fact that most of us are actually killing the homeostatic wellness by listing and seeking those attainments and consumptions as ‘My Needs’, which are undesirable and even toxic. We need to dump the old, archaic and now obsolete populist perceptions about this ‘My Needs’ reality and create a novel and alternative list of needs, which our body and mind actually needs. We need to learn the ‘Homeostatic Needs’. These needs are very small and very easy to have self-sufficiency in. We do not need big moneys or other investments to attain them. We just need to reorient our perception about the very idea and scientific reality of homeostatic needs. As we do it, we can clearly see that to get what we actually need, we in fact don’t need to do much; instead, need to undo a lot. We need leisure, we need peace, we need harmony, we need emotional stability, we need deep sense of being self-sufficient, and we need the feel of security, more than the security itself. We need much little food than what we are consuming, we need much little complexities and conflicts than what we are having, we need more emotional bonding than we are having, etc. The basic idea is, as we have been discussing all along; there is a need to strip and denude age-old and populist cultural cognitions, which we have been living out and consider as essential and appropriate, from our subconscious landscape and consciously replace them with novel and alternative cognitions. This novel cognition comes from the modern knowledge of body and brain mechanisms. We have already discussed Intentionality and drives. They shape our needs. But, populist cultural ideas and practices and success benchmarks vitiate them. They need to be unlearnt. We need to understand the true and real Intentionality and its real manifestations. For example, it is pop success benchmark to spend days and months toiling hard and chasing money, power and fame and then throwing up a party or festivity to enjoy it. Often, this process of seeking and chasing populist success, is done compromising health, mental peace and daily life wellness. This is not the true Intentionality, which our body needs. Body-mind homeostasis needs lasting poise, stability, rest and most importantly, the sense of reward on daily basis. Working hard and partying hard is not the true and real expression of the Intentionality of body mechanism. This actually destabilizes the homeostasis of body. We need to feel rewarded in perpetuity and for that it must come from every small thing we do in our daily lives. Wasting the body and its sanity for long, to attain something big in life and then feel sense of reward is truly a loss making mechanism for true Intentionality of body. This hypothesis is not new. It is thousands of years old. Modern humanity has forgotten it.
The seed and grassroots idea of all the above aspects is to be highly conscious and aware about all realities – be it the inside of your body-brain systems or in external milieus of infinite expanse. The hypothesis; if you could accept; is that in the last 50-100 years, human cultures and human system of life-living management has evolved and progressed in ways, many of which now stand as depraved, vitiated and detrimental t
