Vantage points and perspectives

A documentary on Hulu - http://www.hulu.com/watch/103661/cosmic-journeys-how-large-is-the-universe- got me thinking about how the scientific discoveries can be aligned with philosophical perspectives to get a different vantage point in our daily life. We get up in the morning and start our daily chores, go about with our business but we hardly take a moment to see where all this is approaching. Now I use "approaching" rather than "going" only because with every cognitively intact action, we are "approaching" a goal in our life- it has a feel good tone to it. So here is a thought- "Where do we- as a person or an individual or an entity- stand in this grand schema of life?" There are several philosophies out there explaining to us why we exist and provide a reason for our existence. However, this is the one that I like the most.

Imagine this if you can- outside of us, we have this world that is cosily placed in the laps of Mother Earth. She, on a larger scale, is floating around with other planets, who as a group constitute one of the several solar systems in our Milky way galaxy. Now I dont have to tell you that Milky way is one of the galaxies in our closest proximity of space with the nearest intergalactic region about 60 million light years away (seems like I just did). Moving "out", the universe continues to expand and proliferate at unimaginable proportions which in turn is only an infinitesimally small part of the actual universe! (Let's not even get into the concept of multiverse and the mesh of string theory).

On the inside, there is a world that is similar to the one outside. Within us, we house organs, muscles, ligaments, cartilages, and bones which are made up of different types of cells. Each cell is supplied by blood vessels which amazes me because every cell in the body is within 1/10th of a mm of a supplying blood vessel (Don't quote me on the number!). Peering microscopically, we end up looking all the way upto the atoms that make the molecules which make these cells. But now we even know that there is more to atoms that just protons and neutrons and electrons. In short- the world within us is expanding as well- we just dont know how much it is capable of expanding.

So that leads us to the ultimate, million-dollar question- Who are we?

We are nothing more than a boundary that seperates the outside from the inside. The "I" is exactly that- a line seperating the ever expansive cosmos outside and the explorable microcosm inside. So next time you feel that you feel that your ego is causing trouble within- think for a moment that you are nothing but a line that seperates two worlds that are functioning without you even controlling them one tiny bit. Seems depressing isn't it? But there is more to it than the structural boundary that we as beings create- there is meaning to this boundary and that my friends is the meaning of life.

My best friend's father Dr.Vidyadhar Oke, has always been a "spiritual" guide to me and I have been fortunate to get some really cool perspectives on life through him. While watching this documentary, I was reminded of one of his perspectives of life- according to him- the meaning of life does not lie in the word "life"- it lies in the word "meaning". In an effort to understand the "why" of life, we forget to focus on the "what" of life. The Self is an abstract concept because you wouldn't call just your hand "you". I wouldn't look at my foot and say "Oh that's Amit" or look at my eye and say "Yep, that's me". Because they are a part of me- they have a meaning in their presence. The foot walks, the eye sees and so on. Its their utility that makes them what they are and when everyone does what they are supposed to, they form what is then considered "You". So find your utility in this world and you will know how you fit into it. In this massive body of whatever the heck it is, our effort should be directed towards understanding what purpose it is that we serve in this grand scheme of chaos.

And to help us along, we have been blessed with simple pleasures of life- a cup of hot chocolate on a chilly winter morning.

Find your purpose and you shall find yourself.

Until later.

Teach us to move on....

I came across an interesting philosophy while watching a movie called "Management" the other day. It was about letting go of your past and moving on. Sounds like a drum that has been beaten before, right? True- but how many of us have bothered to slow down in our neural paths and dwelled on the "words" rather than just listen to the acoustic signals that constitute those words?

I have managed to do that for the past couple of nights. Each and everyone of us thinks about the hurtful moments, people and events in our past atleast once a day. No one escapes negativity in their daily routine of life. We think about our actions that have had ripping consequences on our friends and our loved ones and if we look deeper we realize that we are stuck in time. We are stuck in this time-space zone, like a badly recorded DVD, that keeps
looping back images of ourselves doing idiotic things without worrying about the consequences. However, what we do not realize then, is that the consequences of those actions would be getting trapped in their aftermath for a long time. Then I thought about it more. I thought about the moments where we manage to gather enough courage (atleast some of us do) and we accept our mistakes and apologize for them. However, we still are unable to move on- until another thought sparked along- we never really learned how to deal with this stationery time-space concept in our life! We are like an algorithm that has accidently (or purposefully) included a cyclic redundancy check making us go back in time in an effort to deal with it.

It was then that the root of this problem started to surface. The reason why this happens is that no one really told us how to deal with the negativity in our lives. We have always been taught how to avoid negativity- which is by the way, an impossible scenario to begin with. If we invite positivity in our lives, we cannot prevent negativity from coming in. No one escapes from it because that is how the cycle of action-effect-consequences turns and that is how the world revolves. But as our minds start to shroud in the noise of our yin, we begin to feel the glimmer of yang escaping our lives and that is when we need to put our foot down and regain that balance.

I have begun by being more forgiving and more acceptable of my situation and my surrounding. I am learning to return from the point where negativity crosses into the domains of positivity. Our attempt should be to regain that balance in life where we are no more defined by our past, but by the neural sparks that are going to define our future. We should attempt to cleanse these neural sparks and we need a teacher to teach us how to do this. If anyone reading this has a thought- any thought- please share it with us. We are not looking for metaphysical, ubiquitous and spiritual concepts to eradicate our negative thoughts. They cannot and they never will- but we are looking for tools to regain a balance which seems to have shifted on the negative side of our linear scale of life.