Stream of Neo-Pseudo-Hippie Capitalistesque Theoroid Consciousness

I'm beginning to think, more and more, that the ability to keep driving steadily or towards your goal on shifting sands is the true mark of strength and ability.

The reality of today is that there are over seven billion of us on this small planet. It's getting more crowded as we speak, world's are intersecting and finding your own little hermetically sealed biosphere is becoming, frankly, unrealistic.

Of course, I am talking from the background of my own privileged and rather chaotic upbringing, so perhaps take what I say with a pinch of salt.

In the future, I really think that we are going to have to learn the art of symbiosis. Of syzygy. Because without that, without some complexity in our understanding of ourselves in relation to the world that surrounds us, we are ultimately, unsuccessful human beings.

If that sounds too esoteric for you, take the oil crisis. If nothing else is evidence of the growing interdependence of nations, I don't know what is. Oh well also, the Eurozone crisis and worldwide economic slowdown that was triggered by a subprime mortgage loan crisis in the United states. The Arab spring protests that have spread across the Middle East. Kolaveri Di. When a butterfly flaps it's wings in Mexico, there's a hurricane in NY. Chaos theory anyone?

It fascinates me, the way that so many world's intersect. And how, in a happy human being, they find harmony. "But what is happiness but the simple harmony between a man and his life?" said Camus. I spent this morning arguing politics with friends in LA and Chennai. I came out of my room to find my grandmother. I can't explain it, but switching gears like that sometimes comes like a splash of cold water on your face until you accept that all of it, is part of one. Who you are, your life experience and the world that you live in.

We're so taught to believe in the pre-packaged life and labeled ideals that very few of us ever strive to embrace the unique person we truly are. I never have. We [or perhaps I should say I was] are told that to be a good person, is the ultimate goal. But then, we're told that certain choices will devalue the "culture and traditions" we come from and the implication - we will no longer be good. We are told that other choices are "unpatriotic" and if we make them - we will no longer be good. That in order to be good, there is only one way. Doesn't that send the message that if you live any other way, you are either a shade of gray, or worse, total evil? That type of morality - the you vs. us type. The type that relies on static definitions to tailor actions to be part of a society, is not the type that I can live with anymore.

I'm sure most people come to this realization much earlier than twenty four, or much later. It seems like odd timing to be thinking of the above.

I live amongst many social structures, many societies and many values and a world that is constantly changing. What morality do I choose that allows me to respect people around me, in all their plurality, as human beings? What morality allows for the breadth of differences that make us who we are? I haven't found it in the the traditions of my childhood. I haven't found it in the strict practice of culture or religion. Which has led me to believe that perhaps my morality should stem from the fact that we are all humans and therefore, deserving of respect. Maybe I need to reverse things and make the intended effect, the source of the rules. It's not a new idea, at all, but one in which I am finally beginning to see power and dynamism. I'm tired of an ethos ruled by fear of what happens if I don't follow it. I want the moral imperative to question the world around me and explore the what ifs and if nots, not be told what will happen, what should happen and how I should live my life.

Again, I'm pretty sure most people discover some form of the above in their rebellious teenage years.

The truth is, that it's incredibly difficult to live by the above morality. It's incredibly difficult not to sink into a way of thought and nest about - because in times of fear and doubt, well we're all human and in our differences there is unity, doesn't really serve too well for comfort.

I don't have the answer yet for what I do when I feel scared or uncomfortable. I know you are supposed to show strength and deal with it, but it is so difficult, and I am so used to cushions from the truth of what I want this world to be and the place that I want in it that I fall back into old ways.

Consistency isn't something human, I suppose? Errare humanum est?

Anyway, just writing random things, hopefully someday this evolves into a real post. Right now, they're just fleeting, stray thoughts about the nature of things.

From Lisa Graham Art

Atheism 2.0

For some time now, I have been trying to paint a picture of my relationship with spirituality and religion. My Facebook information on religion reads - "Hindu/Haven't Figured It Out" and that has been the status quo for sometime now.

I was raised with the mythology and ritual of my traditional Hindu grandparents. In fact, my first language was Telugu - as spoken by the Pandavas and Kauravas of the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabharata, which at the time, had been televised as a hugely popular sitcom. At the age of 3, much to the amusement of my family, I would narrate in great detail the entire Mahabharata including all those long, complicated names that I can no longer make head or tail of. I sat down to all the requisite poojas, loved prasadam, enjoyed wearing the colorful pattu langas that accompanied any religious festivity and of course, the sense of peace and beauty of the small household altars decorated with incense, fresh flowers, tiny sugar cubes and rows of ants marching to and fro, perhaps also making their worship.

I went to a Montessori school in a church for the first three years of my formal schooling. There were 18 of us from K-5 grade with 3 teachers of rather liberal sentiment concerning spirituality(Tarsilla, Cheryl and Stephen's mom, lol) and who imparted to all their students an overwhelming sense of joy and wonder about the world that surrounded them. We sang the head teacher's favorite Christmas Carol every year, learnt science by hiking through local nature trails and observing tadpoles, birds, skunk cabbage and getting stuck in the mud. We celebrated Valentine's day by playing 'Hug, Hug, Kiss' (instead of Duck, Duck, Goose - which we played through the winter in the Church graveyard), celebrated Japanese New Year by eating rice and fish with our hands, put on a yearly Thanksgiving play, dyed Easter eggs at Easter, made home-made Pumpkin ice-cream in the Church kitchen at Hallowen, learnt about Bees and honey by tasting about 10 different types of honey from different flowers in the Springtime and ran a minor "coal mining" operation in the church backyard. There were never any overt religious dialogue or preaching, but looking back, this period feels like the most deeply religious of my life.

Religion was a part of my life in beautiful ways as a child. Since I was fortunate enough to have a magical childhood where I never really needed to pray to God for anything because I had everything - there was never even any room for disillusionment. Religion has always been a deep part of me, not for spiritual or mystical reasons, but for the simple idea that it has such positive and comforting associations.

That being said, the past few years of this so called 'adulthood' have made me realize that I absolutely do no believe in the existence of a particular entity called God. I believe in the Divine and the beautiful and the kind, whatever that is and wherever or however it is centered. I do believe that there is something greater than me and every other individual on this planet. I catch bits of that feeling when I listen to great music, read about a particular interesting aspect of physiology, stand outside in the sunshine or look at a little baby smiling. But to attribute the beauty of all of those things to the greatness of 'God' seems a little simplistic and frankly, a little insulting. Not insulting - I can't find the word - but somehow it seems to detract from the beauty of those objects.

When people ask me what religion I follow I have been apt to say Hindu, because Hinduism in it's purest form allows for freedom of interpretation with respect to the exact definition of God. I have not really pushed to define myself religiously. Because I consider some of Atheistic argument just as reactionary and pointless as hardline religious people. I have always felt, but never ever really expressed, that a synthesis of the two and personal freedom somehow allied to a sense of community would be the strongest scaffolding on which to build my life. However, I've never really found such a philosophy articulated well. As the above video describes, I've always felt rather squeamish about the doctrine that surrounds the ritualism that I sometimes find comforting and the seeming harshness in using absolute rationality as a guide to my life.

Atheism 2.0 as explained in the video above is the best expression of many of the things I feel personally. It is almost an anthropological approach to the construction of a scaffolding from which to reach new heights of personal growth and development.

Perhaps it's a result of growing up in plenty, but I like when I'm told that I don't have to compromise, that I can have the best of both worlds - because there are so many, and they're never 'hermetically sealed'.

Maybe, I've found my religion.

Peter Pan Syndrome

I've realized recently that I take myself seriously far less often than I used to. I've gotten into the habit of a sort of whimsical approach to life that leaves little time for any constancy of purpose. Of course, I still have the same aspirations, but I really have to dig much deeper these days, to draw strength and action from them.

The reason is disdainfully obvious, of course. I no longer have any excuses to play with. I'm a proper adult whose life is in her own hands, as I have been for 5 years. However now, the stakes are very high.

That idea terrifies me sometimes.

It leads me down this easy path of whimsy and flight of ideas that gives me some excellent conversation starters (I am confident that the former wallflower, goal-oriented, painfully shy me could talk the ears off the most stoic Pashtun warlord or high school mean girl) and a feeling of unlimited freedom and possibility.

But where am I really, now that my whole approach to life has changed? The things that centered me, like career, school, achieving things are now not the only things that I find at the center of my life. Friends have become immensely more important. Family has become so much more important in a more genuine, less need-based way. The interests that I generally suppressed or put on the back burner in pursuit of academic achievement, now push their way to the front. Even at the 11th hour, when they really shouldn't.

If I look at all this optimistically, I'd definitely say that my life has become far more colored and rich. It bursts with things to be done, places to go, people to talk to, music to hear and things to learn. I have so much more to live for now, than I have ever had.

While all the above is wonderful and I'm eternally thankful to whatever power helped to arrange the above (some strange amorphous God like entity), I'm also disappointing in the lack of discipline I show these days. I'm also disappointed in the part of me that still hangs on to the self-destructive belief that I'm just not capable of taking for myself everything that I've ever wanted.

I am so happy these days. And complacent.

In the past, I'd have waited to figure out what was wrong, to work myself up in a fiery speech of resilience and self-patronage and worked zealously for a time.

Now, though I still do this from time to time, I mostly save the theatrics for friends in need or the hungry insecure part of myself.

In all honesty, I don't want the drama anymore. That isn't what I want motivating me. I don't need grand ideals and inspiring rhetoric. I just need to know that when I want something and have the courage and discipline to get it, I can live every day in fulfillment of that goal. That's really all I need to be happy anymore.

Sadly, I've been getting in my own way a lot of late.

I don't know if its the lack of courage, discipline or goals, perhaps a disappointing combination of all three, but I just need to grow up in some arenas of life.

The whimsicality can stay, but I guess it needs to be brought into check and not take over.

The Squirrel Council - A Tribute

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.” - Anais Nin

When there are a million thoughts running through my head, how do I pull the right string and spin one of them into a blog post worthy of my readers' time and interest?

When my ever abortive, scattered, entirely non-linear "thought" process, my penchant for SAT words 7 years after the fact, and my entangling sentence structure blocks a smooth way forward, who rises to the occasion and saves me from myself?

I begin a sentence and by the end of it, find myself at the the opposite end of thought process. I argue and counter-argue at the same time that my mind whizzes through ten million solutions.

My taste for theater bemusedly labels this perpetual Brownian motion, 'genius' and sometimes, 'madness'.

My friend's call it 'The Squirrel Council."

Whatever it is, it's the engine of my soul.

I have no idea what the above sentence means. It's counter-intuitive and not even in an ironic or clever way.

You see what I mean?

However, I was trying to make a point before I erupted into that horror of a sentence. Apart from the judgement and labels and my fear of it's entropous nature, The Squirrel Council is what defines me. From its strange and unpredictable depths comes the amorphous

solid, the woman who is perpetually on not one, but at least five tangents.

Some of those journeys end badly. Like my ill-fated venture into sewing stuffed-animal monsters that created 'Horrible Little Guy AKA Robespierre' or my need to prove my worth as a team player by "excelling" at Basketball (which resulted in two fractures - though I'm not convinced that this story is over).

Most of the tangents continue on, sometimes meandering away to look at the flowers, before re-embarking on the trudge forward.

At some, not so wonderful parts of my life, the past three years for instance, I've fallen off all my tangents and seated myself neatly at the table of my own private reality. Entertaining as it was, it left little room for moving forward from things that I needed to leave behind.

But even in those last three years, while a part of me sat smiling placidly, frozen by good fortune and fear of losing it, life continued.

The Council has pushed me forward, not absolutely or chronologically. Sometimes in one dimension, and definitely not in another; jaggedly. Partially. Relatively. I've been self-possessed and mature in some realms, emotional, quelled by feeling and childish in others. The past, present, and future mingled and pulled me backward, forward, sideways or fixed me in the present and more often that not, the past.

A million thoughts have run through my head and I've nearly never pulled the right string, but yanked at the four that presented themselves and tangled them with all the others.

My ever abortive, scattered, entirely non-linear "thought" process has blocked a smooth way forward, and I stayed where I was in that knot of inexpression, longing and resentment.

All of this has happened before and it will happen again.

But whatever happens, this is where I am today. Where The Council has brought me. To complete imperfection.

Hopefully someday, to completeness in imperfection.

And that is the person who raises her head occasionally and saves me from myself.