There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.
Think about it: there is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real - you get the idea.
It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
By way of example, let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again.
But then you remember there's no food at home - you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job - and so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store is pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: you have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.
Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your cheque or card authenticated by a machine, and then you have to take your flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn't fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etc, etc.
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is:
I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam...
If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it's not impossible that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am - it is actually I who am in his way.
It's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer.
Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.
Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that
You get to decide how you're going to try to see it.
You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.
You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, Krishna or the mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth.
If Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story.
The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
If Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
If Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear, contempt, frustration, craving and the worship of self.
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, awareness, discipline, effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon.
None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over:
"This is water, this is water."
-- Edited from the commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave to a graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio.
The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.
Think about it: there is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real - you get the idea.
It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.
But then you remember there's no food at home - you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job - and so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store is pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: you have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is:
I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam...
If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.
The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it's not impossible that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am - it is actually I who am in his way.
It's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to.
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer.
Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.
But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.
Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that
You get to decide how you're going to try to see it.
You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.
You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, Krishna or the mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth.
If Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story.
The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
If Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
If Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear, contempt, frustration, craving and the worship of self.
Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.
The really important kind of freedom involves attention, awareness, discipline, effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon.
None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over:
"This is water, this is water."
-- Edited from the commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave to a graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio.
24 comments:
great thoughts to start this saturday morning, ilango ji ! grateful to you for providing us these weekend treats which keep our batteries charged through out the week.
om namasivaya
Namaskaaram GuruJi and Brother & Sisters,
Good Morning.
Have a Good Day and Good Weekend. :))
Namaste Ilango Sir
LV
seems like saturday is the new MONDAY....a new start...
Good Morning Sir! I wish you a very long life full of health for the selfish sake of reminding me such T's.
Thank you!
Nice one.
Life is about travel - B to D - Birth to Death.
Middle left is C - which is for Choice.
Choice comes out of Decisions.
To decide is like all ---cides, e.g insecticide is for killing insects, pesticides for pests etc., is the Choice by Killing Options and choosing one of the available Alternatives.
Your Choice lies whether to be Happy or Unhappy over any issue.
But such answer is found NOWHERE....NOW and HERE.
Jai Ho! Jai Ho!
Good Morning Sir & All Friends.
If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough.
But, its not the easiest thing to do too.. unless you experience wealth,the rich life.. you cant get over it... why there is always an "urge" or "need" to earn more??? for example, One mite think, "let me first earn like those rich men & woman and then see if that suits me or not, let me also exp their rich life, why there is a division, why the wealth is not proportionately distributed??? so these questions, are to be asked or ignored??? unless you ask certain questions, how are you going to keep a goal for yourselves? should keeping goal itself a "Myth"???
I am certainly confused ....someone please help!!
Namaste Ilango Sir and JN Family.
Sir and Friends, need help in removing Searchnu.com browser hijacker..
This adware came to system through downloading ilivid software.
I use Norton360 but it is not able to protect or remove this adware. Contacted the Norton support but they not able remove it.
If anyone faced this problem and have solution to solve, please let me know. Thanks.
Good Afternoon Ilango sir. :(
Respected sir and dear friends,
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny
your destiny is "growing rich and slowly" was marvelous . Trying to learn new lessons of life from your "words , actions habits and character".
Happy weekend.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy,
not on fighting the old,
but on building the new.
Hi Team,
Could any of you please send me the file how to calculate ATR based levels for trading ?
Pranaam Master
@Mr.Anandha,
Please Check your mail
All related files sent to your
email.
Julius ji, Can U post those files in JustNifty Group for the benefit of all here like me. Thanks in advance - M S Rao
@GURU,
means--GU---DARKNESS
RU--DISPEL--
this is in SANSKRIT--
so guru,,pleasse read ----wn the student is ready HE WILL FIND THE MASTER--
IF ur confused --check ur premises,,--it does nt exist---so adjust ur glasses.. who is going to help u any way?
UDDHARE ATMANAATMANAM---lord SRIKRISHNA ---bhagavadgita--stands good--WORK ON URSELVES---alllthe best
@ GURU,
Just ask yourself only one question : are all rich-wealthy men happy...? You must have seen some rich persons having not even sound sleep at night....why? Means being rich does not mean being happy in all ways. So now again ask yourself...why so..?I am sure you will get your answer about the limitations of wealth also in getting happiness in life.
Yes...wealth is necessary and it is one of the tools for happiness but not the only and ultimate tool for happiness, there are also so many other powerful tools which can bring happiness in life and take you to your goal.
Almighty gives each one of us as per our requirements and capacity and as per our actions done in past, otherwise the Law of Karm becomes void. If each and every one gets the same result, how would this universe function and sustain..? who will work for whom...? and why ...?Let Almighty decide about this distribution....we have not any right to decide ...we have only right to do actions and accept the results thereof given by God. It is up to us whether we accept these results with smiling face or not and whether we become happy or unhappy with these results.
If you understand the Laws of Karma, your confusion will be solved immediately. Even ilango sir has also put a write up for this Law of Karma...Please read it again and again.
http://tradeinniftyonly.blogspot.in/2013/06/change-your-world-by-changing-your.html#comment-form
I do remember the words of David R. Hawkins :
"We can change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become."
When life gives you a HUNDRED REASONS to cry due to negativity, you show life that you have also a THOUSAND REASONS to smile due to positivity...and in long run you succeed definitely.
Dear All,
Can anyone tell me as to where to get the daily Open Interest for Metals-Commodity. Because the Mcxindia site is not opening. I want to have an alternate source and Sharekhan is not giving daiy Open Interest figures for the export facility.
Regards,
Veer
Nifty (5,881)
The Nifty slipped 105 points or 1.7 per cent in the week ago. Short-term trend is down for the index and is currently hovering just above its next key support at 5,850 levels — this level also coincides with the important fibonacci retracement support level of the prior up move. The index is also testing its 50-day simple moving average at current levels. Rebound from the support at 5,850 can push the index higher to 6,000, 6,050, 6,120 or even to 6,230 levels in the near future. However, an emphatic decline below 5,850 can drag the index to 5,760 or to 5,700 levels.
The Nifty continues to be in a medium-term uptrend. Key trend-deciding level is pegged at 5,477 levels. A strong close below this level will threaten the medium-term view. If this level holds, the possibility of an upward breakthrough to 6,301 or higher is possible .
above is the nifty view of businessline....
many thanks for everything to dear sir
Gauresh and Durga - many thanks for your kindness to reply back.. really appreciate it.. Yup I am an ardent follower of Illango's Saturday post :) I am been reading it many times, but still certain questions pops up and unable to answer them...
Hopefully I will find my spiritual master very soon!!
Sir
Larger tf range 5870 to 5970
Larger tf players wait for BO
Smaller tf 5890 to 5836
Trade the range
Range bound sometime as global positive cues and nifty wants to take a dip.
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