Boats and Beach

Stream of Consciousness

Tamasic-Self-Esteem

     Last week, I met this 75 year old gentlemen.  He was an agnostic and now into meditation and pranayama. A very hale and hearty person, balding with large eyes and a rotund tummy. We got around to talking about meditation and he asked me whether we could meditate together the next morning. I promptly agreed. After my morning walk, we met at my balcony and meditated in the same space. 
After the meditation he educated me about Buddhist approach to meditation.     I replied that I was comfortable with my Gayathri Mantra and it worked for me. After few minutes he left and it was difficult for him to converse with me after that. 
What went wrong?
We all have our Self Esteem or imagine we do have a strong one. This Self Esteem while confident about many things, is defensive about any comment or remark about the perceived Self. It's like a red beep that goes off when it imagines a poke at Self. It catches all offenses that floats in the air and makes it its own. It attempts to personalize the story, add drama and top it up at a personal rejection. 
In Mexico, there are dream catchers that are placed near the bed to catch a person's dream. Similarly, we have our own dream catchers activated to catch all offenses, victim-hoods, hurts, criticisms and pain so that my perceived Self Esteem becomes Rajasic or worse Tamasic. 
It reaps and confers hatred, blame, resentment, jealousy, guilt or shame. 
The Self feels justified and seeks a natural retribution which lends a righteous purpose for their living. 

Shrink Your Snakes

                         Shrink Your Snakes 

I was coaching one of my clients , she was sharing that one of her main challenge to all her problems was that she was risk averse and loathe to take any action , so she felt demotivated and nervous about any escalation that happened in her office . Did she feel competent enough, Yes! she affirmed But she did not feel she could cope with the problems that might arise .

So I asked her to imagine a snake in the room , and what would her reaction be ? she said she would scream and run and hang on to the fan . she imagined it to be a 5 ft quite heavy , pock marked venomous , lying on the side of the table .

I asked her to imagine that she could shrink the snake .

So she shrunk it to a black thin one lying in the corner a feet long 

Now what would she do? I asked 

She said she would call the gardener and have it removed 

the silence of realization hit us 

How often do we create big snakes in our minds , that it renders us powerless , and incapable  of action depletes our ability to cope . Yet time and time again we have in reality coped with harsher and tougher situations , sudden crisis , unexpected ambiguities , unknown people 

My invitation .. how would it be  if I could shrink my snakes into a manageable perspective? 

How does it make me be , when I do ?