Sticks and Stones....

Here's a sound track from How to Train your Dragon, that gives you glimpses of Hiccup, Toothless and some of their beautiful flying sequences

How to Train Your Dragon

Another real nice movie from Diksha's collection of animated movies. This wasn't her first time, but she wanted me to watch... so we did, and I got why it's on her multiple times list.

       

It's mythological times...a community of burly vikings, and fire breathing dragons, pretty much at war with each other at all times. Heroism in the little village is gauged by ability and skill in killing dragons.

And in this backdrop is hiccup, the son of the viking chief......a nerdy, gangly, and friendly chap, and nothing like the tough and brawny viking the father can show off. Needless to say, a major disappointment to the father.

Hiccup, in his effort to impress his father concocts his own catapult and brings down a fierce dragon. Nobody even believes him.... so he searches him out, and when he's all set to kill, finds that he can't kill the injured beast. He can only feel love for the dragon.

Well, they become friends, Hiccup and Toothless, which is what he calls the dragon. He makes a contraption to set right the dragons injured tail wings, and yes, as per title, he trains it, giving us some breathtaking  flying sequences through clouds, between ravines and skimming endless oceans. It's the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless that carries through the movie. Also how Hiccup and Toothless guide the viking community into war with the actual enemy, which is not the dragons ...thus also leading the vikings into an entirely different world view.

How they can make a gawky ugly dragon look cute, fierce and loving is huge credit to the imagination and excellence of Dreamworks.

Toothless reminded Diksha and me a lot of Kutti, a puppy diksha had rescued and who was with us for almost an year, until he was adopted. Sweet and cute, but we could never take the wild out of him :)

A Conversation With Dhruva

This was a mind boggling half hour to me, and that's why it's coming in here.

Yesterday I'm telling Dhruva about a recent energy healing experience, and it's fragile space, as I'm talking to a hard core rationalist and atheist..... and as is want with me in such situations, I'm just going all over the place. (memory from his school, about seven years back... he was doing a project on the book 'The Secret', and when I asked how it was going, he'd said, 'it's all like that crap that you talk about ma' )

A chance find.....guess to show me a perspective of time and growth :)

And fast forward to yesterday.... you could have dropped me with a feather when I hear him say  "our dreams are a clear instance of a parallel reality.... the universe is itself made of an intelligence....."

And he goes on to to tell me about how we view time as linear, but it actually just is....and I'm like so stumped, I said explain how, and he actually did. 

He picks up this book and says, let's say we are like two dimensional figures on a page, and then there's a line that cuts through the book, and then you flip the pages and you see it as linear and moving, but that's only our perception because we don't have the senses needed to perceive beyond three dimensions...... Time only is.

Now you get why I could have been knocked down by a feather :)

It's a beautiful experience when you see your children reach a stage where they have not just understood, but can explain to you a concept that you've been grappling with. I was touched.

Abstaining - A Corollary

In a recent post, Abstaining, we read how 'silence or not stating an opinion' is not nothing, but is also an action. This is said at a thought process level. 

This works the exact same way at a more basic and underlying level as well....... at the subconscious level.  The subconscious mind stores patterns of our feelings and behavior, and then attract the same on the outside. It thus becomes a universal principle.  

Like......When one abstains, life will also abstain

A positive flip:

When you live in abundance, you receive abundance
When you live in acceptance, you receive acceptance
When you trust, you receive trust
When you listen, you are listened to
And so on....

And because this works at the subconscious level it's all about feelings. It's how you feel within yourself........irrespective of the situation. For instance....with abundance, you feel the abundance (irrespective of how much you have....we've seen enough super rich people who do not feel rich and vice versa...get the point?) 

It's all about what you feel within.

Best said by Gandhi's 'Be the change you want to see in the world'. Way more literal than you'd think.

Hypnotherapy - How and Why

It's ten days into the Hypnotherapy course, and I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said, I can actually feel my mind whirring and whining in the effort to absorb, process and reset itself. While it's in essence about therapy through hypnosis, just by virtue of entering the subconscious space, it forays into a lot of surreal concepts....and concepts that extend beyond the known 'space-time' paradigm. Mind Boggling. Pun intended :)

What it's doing is enabling a cognitive understanding of a lot of complex and mysterious concepts which were earlier in the realm of 'beliefs'. I'm beginning to get why they call the course a game changer.

And it's amazing, also because the shift is happening not just through understanding, but also through small subtle surreal experiences almost on daily basis. Yes, for sure the antennae are getting sharper.

Let me start with the hypnosis itself:

Hypnosis.....What this brings to mind is a scene of zonked out eyes, a swinging pendulum, and a zoned out state. A state where the hypnotist has control of your mind. (aka Kaa in Jungle book :)

And this quite naturally sounds scary.......who'd want to give away control of their mind, right? Let someone into our deepest darkest secrets?

Well, Hypnotherapy, in it's therapeutic form, is not really like that.

It distinguishes itself in two distinct ways:

1) It is used only for the purpose of healing, and necessarily a healing desired by the client 

2) The client is 'aware' and retains control at all times

How?

The state of hypnosis induced for therapy, is the altered state where the body is asleep, the conscious mind is in a relatively dormant space and the subconscious mind is accessible, and at all times the client is aware.

It's a state that's very similar to meditation, in that it is also a deeply relaxed state of mind. Difference being that this is for a purpose, and enables laser like reach to the issue at hand, especially in the hands of a good therapist.

Why?

When we say it's used for therapeutic purposes, this has behind it the wholistic approach of the mind and the body, and how each effects the other in inexorably deep ways. What follows is how almost any ailment that we have, however physical, behavioral or psychological it may be, has it's origin through the mind.... through feelings...... through the energy body. And thus, can also be accessed and removed through the mind.

The subconscious mind is the warehouse, the system that is responsible for all that happens 'behind the scenes' -  our emotions, our behavioral patterns, our fears, our decisions, etc. and it's all stored there...... from forever. And Hypnosis pops open a control panel that gives access to this warehouse.

Abstaining

From Seth

Not voting leads to an outcome as much as voting does. You're still responsible, even if you didn't actively participate.

In any situation, not stating your opinion allows things to move forward. Silence is not nothing, it is still an action. 

No sense hiding, from yourself or anyone else.

Mystery ( and Choice)

'I have observed the power of the watermelon seed. It has the power of drawing from the ground and through itself 200,000 times its weight. When you can tell me how it takes this material and out of it colors an outside surface beyond the imitation of art, and then forms inside of it a white rind and within that again a red heart, thickly inlaid with black seeds, each of which in turn is capable of drawing through itself 200,000 times its weight...when you can explain to me the mystery of a watermelon, you can ask me to explain the mystery of God' - William Jennings Bryan

Not new....... it's something we see all around us. Just that when you read it put so beautifully and almost poetically it makes you pause. A point in time that let's you reconnect to the miracle that life is. And to know that you are part of that miracle. In fact the miracle, at the microcosmic level.

And then.......... the difference between the watermelon and us.

We also know.......know that we know. We are aware.

To then ponder on how awesome it is, that in addition to this miracle, we have the ability to behold. To be aware......and above even that..... to alter at will.

Well, sure, the blueprint exists. That's the fate component.....the karmic element. 

But then, to be human is to have the ability to choose the How......Freewill that supersedes all else.

Let's say Fate is like the blueprint......but then, the blueprint is dynamic. A metaphor to bring this out; playing chess with a computer. The software is based on an algorithm which is programmed to move based on your moves. Plus it's a self learning system. In the moves you make you have the absolute choice, with all possible permutations and combinations, and to that extent experience the game as you choose. And then the computer responds to your move and throws up the next level of opportunity, that part fate. Again, choice......and we're thus also responsible for the consequence of our moves.

Awareness and Choice. Choice and Consequence. Fascinating and Empowering stuff !!