Life is nothing without love

Harvey described the heart as a pump. This was a mechanistic view which indicated that if the heart ‘broke down’, it had to be repaired like a machine. It did not take into account that the heart is a living organism sensitive to feelings and can recreate itself. As Deepak Chopra writes, ‘The body is a river,’ a swiftly changing river, which can reinvent itself by replacing unhealthy tissues with tender new tissues at the cellular level?

Our understanding of human life and growth is becoming organic. Building a life is not like putting up a building, but more like growing a tree: slower, organic and evolutionary. It cannot be done in a hurry. Like Nature, human development in order to be healthy has to follow a slower, more stable timetable. Those who seek to speed it up beyond a point will have to pay the price. The price may be their own lives. Many have died to live up to some unrealistic modern myth of yuppydom and success.

Work Environment

The most obvious (relevant) shift in the workplace has been the unseating of the tough autocratic boss style. It is almost impossible to push a knowledge-worker. His contributions have to flow out of his deep involvement and knowledge of the subject. The army commander style is out. The ‘coach of champions’ is the style of leadership that works with intelligent young people who have choices. This is quite difficult for those managers who have been brought up in the old school of obedience and loyalty. A scenario of constant and accelerated change creates physical responses that lead to the inevitable development of clogged arteries.

Innovative Methods to copup Stress

In the modern corporation, there is no place for free passengers, only contributing members. Restructuring, re-engineering, shrinking profit margins have made the workplace increasingly intolerant of the unskilled and non-performing members. The only defence against the pink slip is personal excellence and constant growth. This can put a lot of pressure on the individuals. Flatter organisations celebrate individual performance. There is no place for anyone less capable to hide in the crowd. This can be a challenge. It could also be a test, which many will fail. Constant competition with peers can be very tiring. The only way out is innovation, through uniqueness, through entrepreneurship and intrepreneurship.

Alvin Toffler’s prediction of the electronic cottage (people networked and working from homes) and small office home office (SOHO) is becoming a more and more visible reality. The customer is no longer interested in mass produced products. He demands choices. No more Henry Ford promising, ‘You can have any colour car you want provided it is black.’ Paint companies allow you to even mix your own colours. This can be an opportunity and a treat depending on the entrepreneur’s attitude.

Maslow’s self-actualisation principle—the individual’s capacity to be transformed into the individual God created him to be—is a possible destination for all.

Einstein, Time magazine's ‘Man of the Twentieth Century,’ warned:

‘The concern for Man and his destiny must always be the chief interest of all technical effort. Never forget it among your diagrams and equations.’

The revolution of rising expectations, fuelled by the global perspective, provided by the media and internet creates unrelenting stress.

Analyse the existing ways

Another interesting challenge today is for all human beings to develop the feminine principle. New leadership models require the development of the right brain, which is intuitive, holistic and creative. Most of these traits, along with nurturing and inter-personal skills, were previously relegated to a lower status in a predominantly macho world. The change in leadership styles required today, have made these very traits important. The Indian model of ‘ardhanareeshwarar’— a god who integrates the male and female elements in himself—is an ancient Vedic concept—follow the logic through.

The popular advertisement for Raymonds (the textile giant) shows the complete man as a man who can deal with a baby as comfortably as he can with a balance sheet. It shows someone who can laugh, and is not afraid to shed a tear. Accessing their feminine side is a challenge men today face to deal with the transition to a more humane model of leadership. Giving up the ‘stiff upper lip’ can be very liberating.

Explore Innovative Ways To Fulfill Dual Role

Indian women have moved into the workforce in an unmistakable wave. In modern societies today, many of them bear the dual burden of managing the home and a career. The infrastructure necessary to help them: crèches, dependable childcare, help from husbands, gadgets to make housework easier, is not yet in place. This generation of transitional women is at high risk from heart disease, particularly during the menopausal years. Statistics show that women have fifty per cent chance of dying of heart disease, ten times higher than their risk of dying of breast cancer.

The traditional shock absorber of the family, particularly in Indian families is the woman. Dual responsibilities have reduced her capacity to perform this role. Her ability to absorb and reduce tensions has been greatly compromised. The tensions building up in a nuclear family can have a negative impact on health. The two-income family brings an increased pay check, while insidiously increasing the risk factors for heart disease. Huge reserves of patience are required to cope with this new, changed family structure. Most do not have these reserves.

As women climb to higher levels of the corporate ladder, alternative strategies have to be found to maintain the nurturing capacity of the family. Only joint efforts by the couple and the involvement of elders and the extended family, or community support can adequately fill this gap. This is a never-discussed pressure-cooker situation, hazardous to health, lethal for the heart, building up in modern families.

                            

Defects of Globlisation

The current development of the global economy means that the 173 countries of the world will share a single market place. Demand and supply will respond to the compulsions of global competitiveness. Every country is eyeing the one billion strong Indian market and its fabled 250 million middle class. No company can escape the restructuring and blood-letting, the downsizing rampant today. The possibility of the pink slip stares every executive in the face.

It is being slowly realised that economic prosperity can lead to poverty in the quality of life and health. Is India gradually becoming a global back office with uninteresting, boring, repetitive jobs being dumped on us? The joy of craftsmanship is being replaced by the monotony of the assembly line.

Enhance Self Awareness

Here are some suggestions on adjusting your emotional attitude towards yourself:

Loving another equal and an adult, is transforming—tune in.

Listen to yourself, nurture yourself.

Discipline gives you true freedom.

Forgive yourself.

Live in the present. Now. Every minute.

Love and work are the most precious gifts you can give another.

A gift of yourself is the greatest gift you can give another.

Ask for help. Network.

Do not pretend to be in total control.

Periodically reinvent and renew yourself.

Try hard to keep promises and commitments—your internal sense of justice will punish all infractions.

Cacti can be as beautiful as a rose bush. Love them anyway.

Explore the concept of acceptance of self.

Love yourself. Accept yourself, your body and mind, as you are.While trying to improve both, affirm and love yourself as you are today, here and now.

Accept your whole life, as a divine gift, good and bad as it is now.

Love others. You are the mirror, in which all your loved ones see themselves. You can soothe and inspire them by reflecting back an image that is lovable and competent. Calvin Cooley, renowned sociologist has described the Mirror Image thus: ‘I am what I think, you think I am.’ If you are constantly putting down others, they can be mentally destroyed. Their unhappiness can harm your mindscape.

Accept your family as they are. Unrealistic expectations about your child can put unrelenting pressure on him. Mills and Boon expectations of your spouse can make them feel unloved and inadequate. They can then become cranky and difficult.

You do not need revenge. Let go. Go forward and live. Compete only with yourself. Take pleasure in others’ growth and achievement.

Keep the child in you alive, stroke and liberate the playmate, cuddle the baby in you

Be Silent: Listen To Yourself

In the silence, become aware of yourself. Be aware of your body as full of health and energy. Visualise peace, tranquility, prosperity and fulfillment. Be silent. Be aware of your breathing, the beating of your heart. Once you are aware of your body in silence, in peace and tranquility, then you begin to notice immediately, the destructive effects of stress. You become aware of the first, imperceptible symptoms: the tightening of the jaw, the clenching of muscles in your throat and abdomen, the speeding of the heartbeat. Once you become aware, you can consciously decelerate. Be completely aware of the shift of feelings from moment to moment. Knowing exactly how you feel can help you make better emotional decisions.

Enhance Prana into Your life

Prana is the life force that flows in all living things. When the life force leaves the body, the body dies. Kirlian photography has captured pictures of the pranic aura.

Meditation and a calm attitude cause prana to flow through all our activities smoothly.

When prana is in full flow, the person is full of vitality and energy and enthusiasm.

Prana is nurtured by freshly cooked, healthy food. Pranayama is very pro-prana.

Prana is fed by breathing pure fresh air. Moderate exercise and yoga helps develop the life force.

Eating too much, consuming stale food, exercising till you are ready to drop dead, constant arguments, overworking, getting emotionally upset, breathing polluted air, all interfere with the smooth flow of prana. Moderation is the rule.

Prana enhances the positive field and the vital life force flows freely through it. It creates a powerful positive field—a field of all possibilities where any seed of an idea will develop rapidly.

Sacred Space

Auspiciousness or a feeling of wellbeing is created in a space or a field by treating it as sacred.

What happens to a space that is sacred is transformation.

When you consider yourself as sacred, you will treat yourself well. You will wear clean, good smelling clothes. Maybe ironed and starched, mended if torn, but clean and fresh. You will smile at yourself, encourage yourself. Just as you put on clean fresh clothes, you will also clean up the mental space or field around you. Sweep out all ill will, anger, fear and anxiety. Let there be the fragrance of incense, divinity of prayer and mantra, the smiles of loved ones, laughter and joy, the smell and taste of good plain, food. It is as important to clean the field around you as it is to have a bath. Sweep out the sad baggage of the past. Take into that field only what is bright and elevating, fine and happy.

The space around you, your house, your office needs the same kind of careful attention.When a space is sacred, it magnetizes wonderful people and attracts beautiful events into it.

All the words spoken in that space should be sweet and loving. When harsh words or events happen, do not allow them to take root like evil weeds. Sweep them away and find gentleness and kindness that grows beneath.

Work is Divine

Elevate everyday experiences to the level of sacredness. I first met Reg when he was in his late seventies in Pondicherry. He was running the ‘Good Guest House’. Hidden behind high walls, it is a lovely guest house surrounded by a green garden. It is astonishing to step in from the dusty, noisy street, behind high walls, through a wooden door, into that perfect place. The floors gleamed sparklingly clean, paintings hung on the walls and all was silent inside. Reg used to be a French chef. He met the Mother at the Pondicherry Ashram and stayed behind to look after the Good Guest House for her! ‘Who keeps it so clean?’ I asked. ‘I do’, he said. ‘I love to keep it gleaming, because when I clean the floor, I feel I am wiping the Mother’s feet.’ When work is done with such love, it fills the body and mind with bliss and transforms any place into a sacred space. As Kalil Gibran writes in The Prophet, ‘What is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth from the strings of your heart, as though your Beloved were to wear it.’

This reverence or shraddha is due to all, because of the divine spark that dwells in all men—whether he is a legend or a leper. Sometimes it is obvious. The Divine spark is the silent flame of consciousness that reaches out to you from a flowering creeper or a healthy pet. Sometimes this life force has lost its vitality and is dimmed by dirt, lethargy and lack of care. Clean the glass of your lamp. Make the light shine through. Decide to approach all events, people, and things with affection, shraddha.

Learn to Create Positive Field

Around every person there is a field of emotional energy. Some people always look and feel radiant and everything in their life flourishes and grows. They have a positive energy field around them. Some people, on the other hand, always feel and look morose and tense, everything in their life seems to fade and die. They have a negative energy field around them. The positive field is created by positive emotions and the negative field draws sustenance from negative emotions.

An ancient Indian prayer says: ‘Let all beings be happy.’ Not just friends and family, but all men, not just men but the wider world of all beings. When the great musician Tansen sang, it is said that deer wandered into the palace to listen. Decades ago, the great scientist J C Bose wrote about the response of plants to kindness. Learning to create a positive field is an important part of the climate of wellbeing. The positive field is created by tools and behaviours that may be verbal, tonal and non-verbal.

Enhance Positive Health

Your Happiness Quotient is directly affected by your physical condition. Health is the foundation for a feeling of wellbeing and joy. It is very difficult to be full of enthusiasm if you are not in a state of positive health. The absence of disease is no indication of this state of perfect health. It is a hygiene factor for improving your HQ. There are many steps that will take you to a state of optimum health. A complete medical check-up once a year can provide accurate information about the state of your body to your physician. Make sure this becomes an annual habit.

Just as you would not tolerate a minor malfunctioning in your car, so too, you and your doctor should be vigilant for the slightest disturbance in your state of health. Minor problems, aches and pains should be dealt with immediately, rather than be endured with gritted teeth. Listen to your body. If you are tired, rest. If you are hungry, eat. If you are lonely, communicate, ask for a hug. If you are angry, deal with your anger constructively, resolve it.

The body is our vehicle for the journey of our soul in this world. You may be an immortal soul who happens to own a body, but the body-vehicle has to be maintained in good condition, so that we may achieve the goals for which we were created.

Ancient Ways to Holistic Health

Enlightened Masters have also shown that meditation produces beneficial effects such as reduction of tension, lowering of blood pressure, relaxation of muscles, increased concentration and work efficiency, and increase of immunological resistance to diseases. As a result, some form of meditation has become an essential part of most holistic health programmes. 

Service to others, music, prayer—all are forms of meditation—make the blood flow with serotonins—the happiness chemical. Hindu scriptures enjoin five types of service known as pancha-mahayajna—service to gods; service to sages; service to ancestors; service to humans, guests and the poor; and service to animals. A traditional Indian home, at dawn, feeds ants with the rice-flour rangoli drawn near the threshold, and crows and cows with leftover food. 

Eating should be regarded as a sacred act.  In an orthodox Hindu home, food is offered to the family deity first and is then consumed as prasad or offering with the diety’s blessing. There is a basic similarity between the rituals involved in offering food to the deity and those involved in eating oneself.  In both cases, food is offered as oblations to the five pranas regarded as five fires.  Even if one does not follow this ritualistic concept, one should make eating a fully conscious and peaceful act. Hurry, worry, anger, distractions and chattering should be avoided while eating.

External and internal well being

Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. Really speaking, health is not a state but a continuous adjustment to the changing demands of life and the environment. Positive health implies perfect functioning of body and mind in a given society.

Ayurveda defines health as ‘svasthya’—to be one’s highest spiritual self. It is the state of equilibrium of the three doshas or mind-body energies that govern our external and internal environment―vata (wind); pitta (bile); and kapha (phlegm), along with a contented state of the senses, mind and soul.

All the ancients believed that no attempt should be made to cure the body without treating the mind and soul. To be healthy is to have the ability, despite an occasional bout of illness, to live with full use of your faculties and to be vigorous, alert and having a joie de vivre, even in old age. This concept of operational health has been termed ‘wellness’. It is a sense of all-round wellbeing.

Bring out the Happiness Inside You

Each new day holds out a chance to create a whole new beginning, a sparkling new field of possibilities. At dawn, sweep out the toxic waste of hatred, anger and petty disappointments from your life. Sprinkle the pure waters of prayer on your soul and prepare afresh for a brand-new day. Go peacefully amidst the noise and the haste. Enjoy the sweetness of everyday things. Practice swayambhu―a word that describes happiness welling out of you, like an underground stream in the mountains.

Very rarely will an event or a person crash-land to disturb your life. We all have a choice to make every moment, through our senses, our thoughts and our actions. We can choose what we want to see, hear, touch, taste and smell, think, feel and do. Most of the time, we are responsible for our decisions―for our happiness and unhappiness. We can decide how we want to feel even in the worst-possible situations. To a jealous mind, an innocent smile is proof of adultery. A prisoner can choose to keep the flame of freedom alive within him and maintain a cheerful disposition. Events or people around us are not under our control. But our reactions, our responses to them are. Respond with love and peace.