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samy

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Viewing 15 posts - 106 through 120 (of 165 total)
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  • January 18, 2022 at 9:29 am in reply to: I want to be normal #391562
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    because air does not stay contained in any one particular neighborhood, city or country… because smoke and pollution in the air spread everywhere, then the rich and privileged have to breathe the same smoke filled, polluted air, just as the poor and unprivileged. The rich will breathe the air until it is not too bad for them. The day a billionaire or his children are bothered by the air they breathe, they will do whatever it takes to feel better. We don’t feel the poor air quality to the point of suffering, so no one takes it seriously. However, try to set up a factory or a dump site in a rich locality, see how it goes. The real pollutants are always geographically closer to the poorer ppopulations.

    but if the poor people are sick and dying, who will produce and deliver food to the rich, in their fancy homes…Who will serve them? –The caste system in India is a great precedent and deep dive into human behaviour. To what point can you segregate into classes for one class to live in comfort. There were supposed to 4 main divisions, but lo and behold – we have subcastes within each caste. On the sites my mom creates marriage profiles for me, some subcastes don’t want to mingle with others because they are lesser. Even among the rich, there is a poor guy – poorer rather. He will service the rest. Maybe that’s why we feel like we’ve never earnt enough money. You never know when you will be the poorest person in the room, and we know money is the only value we have in capitalism

    immediate financial profit, – this sometimes bring quick innovation and development too. Take the vaccines for example. It is selfish, but that is the way we’ve organized ourselves – left many a people behind because they bring no monetary value or refused to give people a chance to build their materialistic wealth throughout history – slavery, casteism. These were all devoid of empathy or unity. They were evil snd abusive. A society built on top of such an environment is naturally not ethical. The values it espouses are of looking for the very immediate financial benefit you mentioned, whether you are rich or poor. The only difference being the damage a rich person does is exponential larger and the positive impact they can bring is also just as large because of the resources they have. But positive impact is not what drives us. On top of this, there is no real punishment for exploitation. The rich get away. This is the society our ancestors built. This is our karma. We are suffering the consequences

    Thank you for the compliment.

    Girija

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by samy.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by samy.
    January 17, 2022 at 9:26 pm in reply to: I want to be normal #391554
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    I think the philosophy of death we have for individuals can also apply to us as a species. We can’t control the actions of everyone, so we take the consequences as they come. And the consequences are not just for humans but other species as well.

    The only sad thing is that poorer and underpriveleged are first affected. This however will push the rich to action, so maybe the species won’t go extinct completely.

    January 17, 2022 at 8:02 pm in reply to: I want to be normal #391552
    samy
    Participant

    Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me, anita. It is very selfless of you. You guided me through one of the worst moments in the last couple of years of my life. I am eternally grateful to you for that. And I apologize for being impatient and making you feel like I wasn’t fully taking in what you were saying.

    I’ll remind you again that you can also post here should you want to share anything.

    Girija

    January 17, 2022 at 5:36 pm in reply to: My notion of truth #391537
    samy
    Participant

    Hi Peter

    The story makes what you see as ego very clear.

    Developing a healthy ego to eventually not needing the ego at all is an interesting idea.

    Your riddle – is a finder labelled as such after finding something, whereas a seeker is still looking for it?

    January 17, 2022 at 5:33 pm in reply to: I want to be normal #391535
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    I am learning to let go just now, over time I’ll learn it’s ok to do so.. I’ll practice calming myself down in the meantime.

    Girija

    January 17, 2022 at 1:10 am in reply to: My sexual past ruining relationships #391506
    samy
    Participant

    Hi David

    I want to help you but I have strong opinions on your past experiences that has nothing to do with you, so if that comes across please don’t take it personally and you can choose not to reply at all.

    It felt normal until it didn’t. Anyway the relationship ended mostly because I didn’t want to live that lifestyle anymore I thought – This is what you need to revisit. A lot of us are nostalgic about our pasts. You knew in that moment that you didn’t want it. But the nature of that kind of a sexual relationship is that it is intense ( whether you liked it or not ) a normal sex life will naturally seem boring. Ask yourself why you crave that high and is it healthy?

    Did you really want that open relationship – or did you have to do it?

    The rush you felt was humiliation, your brain has been wired to enjoy that now. Watching your lover with someone else whom you think is better than you and training your brain to take the humiliation as satisfaction is sad. You need to work on getting pleasure from positive emotions and feelings. If you have a habit of watching porn, my suggestion would be stop that. Also, focus on building asexual relationships and looking at women as more than just ways to achieve sexual gratification.

    With love and understanding, even normal sex can be amazing. You need to revisit what gives you joy and why. For that to happen, take some time to build a life and personality that makes you happy. A version of you, independent of other people, that you like. This will take time, you can then look into relationships. You seem to just want a partner and that makes it very generic – I want to settle down and have a healthy relationship with a woman, – contrast this with the actual experience of being with a partner for 10 years. What do you think will win out? Define what you want, who you want to be and what you hope to achieve – this will help you find what you really want. Notice, I haven’t asked you to define the kind of woman you want. The focus is on you. A relationship is just a part of your life. And you are only focussing on the sex and that’s ruining it. Can you fill yourself life up with more fulfilling experiences and joy?

    Finally you need to make the decision – which lifestyle gives you most happiness and follow that. My hope for you is that you make that decision after building yourself up.

    January 17, 2022 at 12:41 am in reply to: I want to be normal #391503
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    it’s fear, isn’t it, based on the delusion that if you stop worrying about something (which you cannot change), you will lose control and bad things will happen. – Yes, you nailed it! Fear that if I let it go, it will come back and hurt me in an unexpected way. And I took time to understand why. I think it comes from my parents. I always felt like I had to keep an eye on adult matters, at school I used to pretty much tell my mom what she had to do or say with my teachers and my dad used to not come at all. Even though I didn’t know how because I wasn’t really an adult. But at the same time, I was expected to do well at school. So I had no support but all the expectations. I am repeating that at work, even if there is no support, expectations from them are okay and I need to meet them. Even if it is expectations I have set for myself. I go through this with my mom’s health as well and you may find this strange but it has to do with fear that if I don’t pray to God that my mom has been hurt enough and she deserves a good life now, he’ll give her health problems.There is fear that if I let go, there will be some kind of backlash whether it is with health or work.

    But ultimately my childhood taught me to look ahead. I can’t really live in the present moment because my childhood didn’t give me that chance. It was always – look ahead, predict how things could go wrong and they were usually things I couldn’t change but it felt like if I didn’t think about it, nobody else was and we would be doomed. I have the fear that I need to make sure I know all possibilities because life was going to hurt us.

    (1) Finding something new to be anxious about is the nature of anxiety for every person who is significantly anxious, (2) Focusing on the sensations of the body is like taking an elevator down from the abstract/ overthinking brain => to the concrete sensations of the body, from the abstract to the concrete: it lessens anxiety when you do that because anxiety and overthinking go together. – Yes, in fact, when I notice the sensations, I am bringing my brain back which is otherwise all over the place and I wouldn’t even remember how I got there.

    Thanks for appreciating my mentoring, I wish I could do more but I don’t think it is safe.

    I am editing to add, I was consistently disappointed by my parents’ inability to make us feel safe and it now has me unable to believe that life can be good and trust anyone with taking control. But at the same time, I think it has affected my ability to function and exhausted me, hence this topic and how it started.

    Girija

     

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by samy.
    • This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by samy.
    January 16, 2022 at 9:38 am in reply to: I want to be normal #391363
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    Every time you let go of what you cannot change, you are encouraging a new mental habit. – that’s good to know. I was wondering how to kickstart new mechanisms. Thanks for your feedback. I’ll keep this practice up.

    I have since discovered some breathing techniques – 4 seconds inhale and 6 seconds exhale is working for me. It calms my body down.

    I have major Monday blues and this week there are some deadlines we need to meet, but I managed to not dwell too long on how we’ll achieve it. I decided I will be ok if I fail. This has been a breakthrough.

    Overall there is major discomfort in letting things go. The physical sensations last longer but I am able to let it go and get my time back. My current moment seems good enough by itself, so I am not afraid of the future.

    Another thing I realized – I am scared of anxiety itself. It is strange but I can be pretty aloof to what is triggering my anxiety or even get through it with the anxiety running through my body. Anxiety has been my default for so long, after all. My life has always been be really afraid of something, get through it and find a new thing to be afraid of. So that cycle is familiar to me. But the actual anxiety itself I never cared about. Now that I want to overcome anxiety, any time I sense anxiety in my body, I get more anxious. Almost upset that it keeps coming back. But if I look at it as just sensations, that it will go away too, it’s not a big problem. I shouldn’t worry about it coming back. If I calmed myself in the present moment, that’s a win.

    About advocating for women. I have given up on Indian men. This includes men in my family. I feel bad saying this but they can be fun, supportive and a lot of other things but the overarching theme when it comes to women is downplaying our struggles and making us justify our needs and dismissing them anyways. The approach I take is I mentor the younger women joining our team. Especially with respect to not being too vulnerable and letting others bring them down.

    Girija

    January 15, 2022 at 9:44 pm in reply to: My notion of truth #391350
    samy
    Participant

    Hi Tommy

    Hope you find a good teacher and sangha. Live a long life and help many others – I will look for a sangha but from what I know there isn’t one nearby. Hope I find one.

    That was an amazing story! Living in the moment, what’s done is done.

    I like the stories you share, you don’t have to apologize.

     

    January 15, 2022 at 9:37 pm in reply to: I want to be normal #391349
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    There were a couple of instances –

    1. We use an app called Slack to chat with other employees or groups of employees, at work. I was required to drop a message asking for one team to approve a certain workflow. They had 2 groups and I posted in 1 but got no reply, so I posted in the other after waiting a day for a reply in their first group – but I got a rude reply to the second message, implying I wasn’t following the process. It hurt my feelings. I felt the need to defend myself and I did. I explained what had happened and the person let it go. After that, I told myself the moment has passed, it doesn’t matter now. I am having to work to hold on to the moment. I can simply let it go. This I got from Peter and Tommy from the other thread, and you. Doing work when no work needs to be done. But also, I wanted to explore why it mattered so much – and using my questions – I was able to conclude that this was a mishap and doesn’t make me incompetent. Because, I think that’s what hurt me – that the other person was implying I was incompetent. And you know how much that has always bothered me.

    Another instance, I am active on reddit where I both ask and give advice for developer related questions, including on one forum which has Indian developers. It is a male majority group. There was one post that was especially hurtful towards women. How people want to bring equality, but don’t consider men. I found that malicious because most developers know there are very few women and that is why this was required. Some of the comments were really offensive, implying they want women because they will do favours, if you know what I mean. This hurts because the treatment towards women is really bad, a lot of women quit here because of that. They get no support at work or home. And a lot of the conditioning that men have of women belonging in the kitchen plays out at work with both younger and older Indian men. But I don’t want us to quit because if we do we will forever remain in the clutches of our fathers and husbands. Some of these men are going to be those fathers and husbands. I made my own comment explaining why equality was needed. Another member was really rude, completely discarding what I was saying and instead attacking my tone and saying I am extreme and he hates that and went on to insult me saying it must be really hard for my team mates to deal with me. I was immediately able to recognize he was trying to prick at any insecurities I might have. This is new for me. I would have tried to defend myself. But this time I knew he was trying to get personal to hurt me. And knowing that, it helped me from not engaging in the conversation further. I was able to let it go thinking he said what he had to and the moment has passed, I am not going to change that.

    The only reason I think I might be doing it wrong is – both those situations kept coming back on their respective days. I had to keep getting my mind away from them. Once you decided not to let the weather affect you because you can’t change it. Would it still come back? Or am I doing something wrong? My heart rate was high throughout the day for the second instance and I read that stretching increases the blood flow and relaxes our body. So, I had to do that multiple times in the day. Is it normal?

    Also, since I brought it up, it makes me sad that a lot of men are not able to just let women be. The resistance to women having their own freedom breaks my heart.  The only thing that will fix this is having more women in the workplace, it wouldn’t be so easy to dismiss us. My team has a 5:4 women to men ratio, and just 3 of us women were able to slowly tire one of the men out and stopped him from making sexist remarks. It’s not like we coordinated it. It’s just that a lot of things women here used to put up with is because they had no choice. When we feel empowered, it is not easy to get away with treating us like a commodity and I think this is the reason for opposing freedom for women. I’m sorry for bringing this up here. I don’t have anyone to talk about this to. My family would just say let it go. But even after having my own freedom, if I have to let men walk all over me and accomodate the sexism, that is not real freedom.

    Girija

     

     

    January 15, 2022 at 1:44 am in reply to: My notion of truth #391321
    samy
    Participant

    Hi Tommy

    There is a trap to go looking for something. Because if you are looking for something then you just may find it in one form or another. – You’ll always find what you are looking for, even if it is not the truth.

    If one is conscious and mindful then one will be engaged with life. Have feelings. This is a part of living. When I love, I want to feel love. Not detached from the people I love. With a clear mind and full of attention, live life’s every moment fully. If something sad happens then feel sadness. Not dwell in the sadness. Not be overwhelmed by such things. Engage with the present moment, your relationships and emotions, but use the truths mentioned earlier to understand the true nature of life and not dwell or attach to any one notion.

    Letting go of the ego is letting the mud clear from the waters. Then one can see clearly to all depths. It is with wisdom and compassion that one lives in freedom of the ego. I understand this. I am still struggling to understand what taking action for myself or for my oen good would look like without having an ego. I’ll dwell on that 🙂

     

    January 14, 2022 at 11:22 pm in reply to: I want to be normal #391319
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    I read you last post again. I get it. I think I practiced it, but would love to know if what I did was right. Let me know if you are okay with that

    Girija

    January 14, 2022 at 11:17 pm in reply to: My notion of truth #391318
    samy
    Participant

    Hi Peter

    When you say ‘let go of my ego’ what do you think that means? – To me ego is the indentity one assigns to themselves. The concept me being my own entity separate from others comes from the ego. And I had mentioned earlier that I think the ego is there to protect us. Surely, life would be a lot easier if we let go of my understanding of ego because the number of things that matter would dramatically reduce. But at the same time, if I don’t have that ego wouldn’t it be hard to protect myself from others? Is your idea of ego different?
     

    January 13, 2022 at 8:19 pm in reply to: My notion of truth #391268
    samy
    Participant

    Hi Peter

    working for that which no work is required – the moment has passed –  if so what is it that we are holding on to (attaching to) – this is awesome. Trying to change something that can’t be changed.

    Which comes first Mindfulness OR Detachment? – I think they’d go hand in hand. You need one to practice the other for a long period of time.

    For myself I often find myself falling into the trap of indifference.- I get it. Caring without attachment vs not caring at all. Is the problem with indifference that you would stop living or engaging with your life. Whereas detachment let you engage in happy and sad moments but with a more balanced attitude.

    ‘let go’ of ego (letting go of ego here is not  denying the ego only avoiding identifying (attaching) the sense of self to ego)  Thus again we work for that which no work is required) – Can you really have a good life if everyone is identifying with their ego and working in their best interest. Like at work, let’s say I let go of my ego and take work from others as well, isn’t it against my best interest. I would be giving away from energy, no?

    While we perform our tasks, one begins to notice when the inner state is influencing the outer experience Or when the outer experience is influencing the inner. – It is how you look at something that defines how you see it. If someone yells at me, it is because I chose to take it badly that I feel negative feelings, so I’ll let it go, it has happened already. I can see how indifference could creep in.

    There is a saying Knock and the Door will open, Seek and you shell find. I would add that we can seek and we can knock and then we must wait at the door to open in its time. We ought not to try to open the door ourselves or force it open. – I understand this. I think I won’t find the door until I’m ready to open it, just like what you’ve quoted Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought
     

     

    January 13, 2022 at 9:42 am in reply to: I want to be normal #391248
    samy
    Participant

    Hi anita

    Thank you for giving me so much of your time. I’ll slow down.

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