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Psychology from Philosophy:

Our psychology is deeply routed from our various philosophies in life. For example the philosophy that there is a presence of higher power who guides us  during our life spans will have a marked influence on our intelligence, happiness and peace. If we believe in the presence of a director who is casting us, then the following aspects should be believed to be true.

1.  There is presence of order and logic in life. Everything is as per the plan of timelines.

2. Everyone is equally important and just the roles of people are different. For the directors the entire cast is important. 

3. Everything is in proper control of the highly experienced director. He has seen and lived through all. Everything is going on as per the script. It is total suspense.

4. I am a drop in the ocean and the latter is more important than the former. The story is more important than my individual role.

5. I will get what I need based on my role in life. I do not own anything although I get to use the properties. None of the co-actors are really attached to me. I always perform individually, even though I collaborate for some things with the group.

6. Things can get topsy-turvy based on the direction of the script. No event is personal and each event is temporary.

7. Our defects are there to make the characters more suited for the script.

8. After the end of the movie nobody cares for the characters. After the production we are all the same.

9. The movie, although predominantly a suspense thriller, is also a best mix of tragedy, comedy, romance, seriousness, fiction, art, music, games etc.

10. We prepare ourselves to play our best role and act as per the present state of mind. After the act is over we do not carry the emotions and just prepare for the next moment or act. To understand the script is the most important endeavor in the entire production.

11. We try to choose the role we want to play based on our liking, openings and our forte.

P.S: Although this post appears to be a spoiler as we are the cast as well as the audience, I reckon this one is also a part of the script. The post will be read by a small number of audience and hence will not change the direction of the movie to a great extent as per points 1 and 3 above.

Developing intelligence:

The two main aspects of developing our intelligence are the priorities by which we perceive the different aspects of life and how rationally we utilize the current moment. All our achievements and realizations depend on these two aspects. Our environment only charts out the path of our achievements and realizations. On the contrary all our failures can be traced to incorrect priorities attributed to some aspect of life or incorrect utilization of the present time at some points. Everything is very simple in life but appears complicated due to our incorrect priorities and focus.

The incorrect priorities and focus can be corrected by effective thought management process. Our thoughts come from three areas in the mind.

1) Automatic regular thoughts come from thought priority queue. 

2) Our mental inputs and deep reasoning happen from the permanent memory.

3) Our cravings happen from habit maps.

Effective thought management involves the following:

1. We need to involve more with mental inputs and deep reasoning and just get the hints from priority queue and habit maps.

2. We need to learn to perceive things with less importance or priority so that the thoughts from thought priority queue do not overwhelm us. 

3. To improve our intelligence we need to regularly provide inputs to our mind regarding correct priorities of various aspects of life.

The above three points when well executed will ensure that we have the right priorities and focus necessary for developing sound intelligence.

Thoughts Management:

Our thoughts are generated based on a priority queue maintained by our mind. The priorities are based on the importance we give to the various events while perceiving them. The data in the thought priority queue depends on what we perceive from our sense organs and the deliberate inputs we provide to the mind. Therefore the order of data in the thought priority queue depends on our perceptions of the environment along with the priority or importance we give during our perceptions and the conscious mental inputs we provide along with the priority of perceptions during the mental inputs. This leads us to the conclusion that to control our minds, we have control our environments, manage our mental inputs and control the priorities of perceptions. The thoughts for mental inputs are generated from the permanent memory and the same is updated with the memory of the new thought. The effects of environment and management of mental inputs can be achieved by having right focus of attention. Therefore, management of our thoughts rests on focus of attention and priorities of perception. Please note that apart from thought priority queue thoughts also come from our habit maps. This post does not include information about management of thoughts from the habit maps.

The extrapolation of the newest data happens through our imagination and the priority of the data reduces with time. Every few seconds reorganization of the data in the thought priority queue happens based on the latest priorities. Therefore thoughts with data having higher priorities are repeated more frequently and block the mental bandwidth. Moreover there is release of some chemicals in the brain during such thoughts leading to emotions. Therefore the primary task before us in the management of thoughts is to reduce the priorities of high priority thoughts on regular basis by downplaying them and by mental inputs of statements like everything is equal and trivial. This is a gradual process as the existing impressions of our configurations have to change. The configuration is the average priority of the category of the thoughts.

The downside to reducing the priorities of thoughts is that when priority becomes very low with time they are lost or forgotten. This aspect of forgetting should be taken care of by writing important data externally and revisiting them.

Objectives of thought management:

1. Thoughts should be useful

2. Thoughts should be positive

3. Thoughts should be controllable 

4. Thoughts should be interesting 

5. Thoughts should be peaceful 

It is clear that it is very difficult to get our thoughts with all the objectives met as some objectives compete with each other. Therefore, based on our life situation we need to come up with the best set of objectives. Out of the objectives mentioned above the third (controllable thoughts) one is the most important one as without this one some of the other objectives cannot be achieved. 

 Mind has following thought processes.

1. Questioning from its database

2. Receiving inputs by conscious thoughts about the present event while contemplating, listening, feeling, watching, reading and doing something.

3. Auto mode from thought priority queue.

4. Thoughts from habits from habit maps based on habit cue.

If we have to improve ourselves we need to use more of questioning. For our routine work we need to give inputs for some action using the second type of thought process. Regarding the third and fourth type of thoughts we need to just pick up the hints from it and go back to questioning mode. If we do questioning while being in the auto mode the results will be devious as only the data in the thought priority list will be used and not the permanent memory. Habits should be avoided although it uses less energy than questioning because it is often imperfect and risky as the alertness is lost while thinking out of habit.

Mind Control:

The essence of mind control is to control thoughts from thought priority queue. From our thought priority queue in our minds three types of thoughts come to us. They are attractive, repulsive and neutral. The attractive and repulsive thoughts are due to our perceptions with high intensity. These thoughts leads us to reckon things with exaggerating differences between people, places and things and also leads us into repeated thinking with higher intensity. These lead us into thinking with emotions and blocking of mental bandwidth. To remain wise and intelligent we need to transform our way of perceptions from attractive and repulsive realms to the neutral one. When this happens the mind will be in our control, we will be emotionally strong and will become more intelligent. The forces of attraction and repulsion in our minds happen primarily on account of our desires, fears and ego. The attraction and repulsion happens due to desires and fears and our ego serves the purpose of stepping up the emotions due to them. All our emotions are due to the modification of desires, fears and ego. We need to primarily control our desires, fears and ego to successfully control our minds

The bottom line is to start to perceive everything with less intensity.

Summary: Automatic regular thoughts come from thought priority queue. Our mental inputs and deep reasoning happens from the permanent memory and our cravings happen from habit maps.

Effective thought management involves the following:

1. We need to involve more with mental inputs and deep reasoning and just get the hints from priority queue and habit maps.

2. We need to learn to perceive things with less importance or priority so that the thoughts from thought priority queue do not overwhelm us. 

3. To improve our intelligence we need to regularly provide inputs to our mind regarding correct priorities of various aspects of life.

Karma is for our soul:

All the laws of karma are for the thing that is permanent and never dies, our soul. It is obvious that the universal soul gets divided into individual souls on which our bodies live. The souls get updated with different bodies along with the same configuration during our death and rebirth. Our karmas are included along with the configuration. When we feel pain it is actually the soul, which feels pain. But since our bodies are projected by the soul in a fashion that our brain processes it, we feel the body is in pain. To ascertain this we need to look at some facts. 

a) Our bodies originally must be designed by an entity much primitive than us or formless one. This is because if the question arises about who designed the first form, it becomes obvious that the first form has to be designed by a formless?

b) Our original creators must be able to be in our bodies to test our feelings and pain.

c) If the above point is true then it is evident that the matter that makes up the body and the consciousness is different.

d) This also means that consciousness or soul can change bodies.

e) This also means that our bodies are just plain matter and a separate formless entity which pervades everything is actually the life.

f) For effective management the formless entity or life is logically divided into numerous segments, which gets attached to the individual bodies.

Now karma or the law for our actions has to be formulated because any million plus year project, like our universe, can only be maintained if there are some fair rules. On one side the world should be seriously interesting and at another side it has to be fair so that the participants do not quit. The balance of the above two aspects are the fundamental pillars of karma. Since the lifetime of humans is hundred years and that of soul infinity it makes sense to make the rules for the soul. When the karmas are all lived and exhausted, which is when the soul's configuration becomes perfect the soul has no further duties till the star;;t of next cycle of evolution.

PS: If the body and the soul are different it may be possible that the body may be attached to different soul based on its karma. If that is so we are neither the body nor the soul. Body is plain matter and the soul which is the life may be changing. Therefore it is suggested that we identify with the total group of life system and not just this one body. This also means that our soul has done a lot of work for which we do not have the memory. Therefore we should develop infinite confidence instead of depending on our limited memory of the current existence.

Nature of the universe:

We have made our opinions about the world based on how we perceive the things in front of us. Besides this we have studied few things about science and religion. However on deeper inquiry of some of the aspects like unique finger prints for trillions of humans, need for a underlying force for making the observable forces of nature, development of plants and trees from seeds, child birth etc., it must be obvious that we are living in a virtual reality. Similarly on deeper inquiry on some aspects like consciousness of vision, hearing, taste, smell, feelings and pain etc. in a system of virtual environment, we may guess them to be only  possible if the world is some sort of imagination. One proof for this is the pain we sometimes feel when we are hurt in a dream. Our dreams are the clues for the nature of the reality. Therefore my closest guess is that this world is a projective imagination of some entities, that are not known to us. It is like there is another brain which is imagining our apparent brains along with its thinking and feeling. It is the main brain that is seeing, thinking, feeling etc., but the auxiliary one believes that it is the one as both the brains are in the same context.

My theory of existence:

Proof: The universe in which we are living is formed by projective imagination of formless entities based on a common code of dynamic database:

The theory of existence is developed from the following steps of arguments.

Argument 1: Justification for Virtual Reality:

If we consider the facts about unique finger prints for trillions of people, seeds growing into plants, reproduction of animals etc, it can be guessed to be only possible, especially in such a large scale only in a system of virtual reality. Therefore this world is a virtual reality.

Argument 2: Our original creators must be able to be in our bodies to test our feelings and pain. If the above point is true then it is evident that the matter that makes up the body and the consciousness is different. 

Argument 3: Justification for imaginative world:

In a system of consciousness and virtual reality the matter can only be a projection by the consciousness, otherwise how can consciousness have a seamless integration with the matter. Therefore, the consciousness of vision, hearing, taste and pain is the imagination or projection of some entities based on intelligence in the form of some impressions, which are also some form of imaginations or projections. The kind of imaginations in reality are different compared to that of our brains in that they are permanent impressions. Therefore this world is an imaginative projection of some entity. In other words the nature of this world is a virtual reality.

Argument 4: Justification of a single formless source of existence:

A form can't make another life form but only a formless can create an illusion of life form because if it was a form that created another form, the creator form cannot test the feelings of external life form. Also if a form has to be designed by another form then the question arises about who designed the first form. Therefore source of our existence is a formless entity. Moreover, there must be a single formless source to start with as formless cannot communicate with one another.

Conclusion: There was a single formless entity, that developed our present world out of its imaginations based on a common database of dynamic, persistent, imaginative code of its own imaginations. The imagination of the world along with the imagination of feelings and emotions is real and the pain happens only at the individual points based on a software code in such a way that the some of the projected software entities appear to be having life and feeling the pain.

My final take on the nature of the universe:

Life is everywhere in the observable real estate. We are just mutable objects in a memory space in the real estate.  For the benefit of those who are not from software background additional explanations are provided in the notes section below. When we die our memory space points to another mutable object and the previous one becomes immutable. The non livings are immutable objects. The life is only one but appears many due to the state changes based on some programming. The behaviors of this single entity are only based on sequences of state changes. This can be confirmed by Advaita Vedanta and quantum entanglement of quantum mechanics. The proof for presence of only a single living entity is provided in the notes section below.

The atoms in our body are entangled with the brain due to which we feel the difference when an anything happens to the body. For example how do we sense that the sound that came just now came from a distance? I mean without something like quantum entanglement all feeling of sound would be as if it came from the same place. Probably quantum entanglement happens between our ears and the source after computing the position of the source. There has to be a carrier for all the atoms in the world. That with carries all the atoms is actually the life. 

Everything has originated from nothing. Our mind is judgmental about nothing. Therefore we feel nothing is possible from nothing. It is obvious that the nature of nothing is that anything can be written on it. Our bodies are just writings on the clean sheet and hence we cannot write what we please. The underlying layer can write anything, feel or imagine  anything in its memory space. Therefore all the objects that we see are just state changes on the one thing that exists, which we may call as nothing. Therefore there are no objects, forces, movements, space or time in the real sense. These make sense only when there is more than one entity. There are only two state changes viz. visual and non visual. Both the visual and non visual state changes are like imaginations because outside of the one thing called nothing, there is nothing else and hence the state changes are internal aspects. 

It is obvious that code streaming and code duplication take place for the purpose of increasing the speed of executions, due to which speeds greater than speed of light is possible in case of quantum entanglements. Depending on whether someone is observing and position of the observers, the intervals or positions of the state changes constituting apparent traveling entities are computed. For example when two guys observe two photons at distance of 13 km both see the entanglements simultaneously as the state changes happen only at two points.

Although the laws of physics is not a reality (in the sense there are no forces, time, space, movements etc.), they are very important for mankind to explore the world and involve in the timelines planned by the creators. 

Notes: 

1) Software terms: Object is a software term for something that has personal state and behavior. In immutable objects once they are formed, the state and behavior do not change, where as in mutable the state and behavior may change any time. State changes in this topic refers to changes in properties like color, visibility and feels at the same memory location without any movement. An object's behavior in this topic just refers to series of instructions leading to some state changes. Memory addresses refer to atomic locations where individual parts of programs are stored and their executions happen. The programs are state impressions in the single entity containing instructions in distinct memory addresses. The apparent forms are state impressions in the same entity displaying execution of the programs in separate memory addresses.

2) Proof for presence of single living entity:

a) The original design of an entity with form is possible only by a formless because it it was from a form than it is indeterminate about who designed the first form.

b) Our creators should test our bodies for the internal features like our feelings and pains and therefore should be in our bodies for the tests. This proves that our bodies are different from the soul and  both are interchangeable.

c) Two formless entities cannot communicate with each other. Therefore our bodies must be just some programming in the single entity. By running the copy of the program the other parts of the formless entity can test the different apparent forms. The carrier of all the atoms and other elements have to be all pervasive and hence there is a single life form. 

Summary: 

Just like a light sequencing system in which the lights appear to be moving, but the individual lights are in the same place, the universe is a single entity with sequence of state changes. The primary logic for this single entity theory is that if there was anything with form than the unanswerable question remains about who designed the first form. If everything was formless then there must be only one formless entity otherwise, how can two formless entities communicate with each other and create such a robust universe. Another aspect which suggests a single formless entity representing the universe is that there has to be a container for all objects that we see. Moreover, at the beginning of the universe, the probability of one all-pervasive entity with some quality is same as the probability for nothing (with no qualities). If we consider the fact that the universe exists, then it is obvious that at the start there was one entity with qualities. Therefore it is clear that this universe is a single entity, which is called consciousness in Advaita Vedanta and the world is an illusion created by it based on a pattern of imaginations.

Essence of life - a poem

Some are proud of their achievements,

and some are proud of their riches.

But the ones that sleep well,

are the ones humble enough to seek the REAL.

And when the eternal sleep comes,

then you have to leave everything and go.

But the ones who seek the REAL have nothing to let go.

So, be sure of the REAL value of the things you aspire,

before you go after the objects that you desire.

Just like our dreams, 

this world of ours is the imagination of GOD.

However, how we perform is 

left to our own imaginations.

We are not what we are made up of

but are what we make out of it.

Like the way we are captivated by the ornaments we keep, 

although solely  gold only is there,

We are imprisoned by the body we keep,

although solely GOD only is there.

So, use the body as just an over coat,

which gets replaced when it is worn out.

Remember you are just the will in reality,

Which gets obscured as an human entity.

So, exercise your will to perfection,

and not let the mind its deviation.

Everything that we perceive is an illusion, 

where attachments cause affliction,

because attraction and repulsion during perception cause disruption.

So, do not accept what comes up in the mind as the best solution,

But keep correcting it in logical progression.

However, our ego keeps us always drifting,

So, to kill it is important in the very beginning.

This world may consider you as ordinary,

but for GOD each one of us is noteworthy.

Each one of us have talents galore,

hidden inside thoughts all over.

To unearth them from the mine,

is the important work which is to be done.

If your problems seem insurmountable,

you are placed high in the big game table.

These are the rules of sport,

which make the game full of import.

All you need is to get your PRIORITIES right,

then success sure to betide.

Consider your life as it is a movie,

and ACCEPT what comes along without worry.

However the suffering of pain feels very real,

So, be CAREFUL about how you deal.

Remember these words of wisdom,

To sail through in this universal kingdom.

Path of excellence:

One of the important aspects to decide whether to become smart is more important or to show that you are smart is more important. If we consider the long term prospects it is always better to concentrate on becoming smart than showing off you are smart. The the main drawbacks of showing off is the risk of being outsmarted, risk of being disliked and the waste of energies spent in proving that you are smart. The only drawback of just being smart is the late recognition. In the short time that we have, it is prudent to concentrate more on the principles than the personalities. We need to focus on how the various systems work and the principles behind it and enhance the knowledge. There is no shortcut to success. Only our experiences when understood and enhanced over a period of time provides the skills for our progress. Instead on continuing in this path many of us deviate into unproductive areas and stop from the path of excellence. All our attractions towards results are bottleneck for the path towards excellence. When we become experts in a field and feel we have done enough justice towards the field, we do not need the approval of the society. The social status is an illusion because it just rests on the inadequacy of the people. In short we need to decide whether to be in the path of excellence is important or the laurels. We need to keep in mind that attachment to an end result leads to loss of freedom in terms of time, money and effort spent.

People first communication:

Every time we converse with a family member we convey one of the following three things.

1. I like you.

2. I am okay okay with you.

3. I am not liking you.

Therefore if we first decide our position regarding the above three options, there will be better communications with the member. Often when we are upset with something we do not concider our position about the above three options, and therefore resort to a rude criticism. I feel we should start communicating better with our family members first if we have to communicate better with society, without stress on anybody. Incorrect communication is all about missing an important aspect around the issue. However, we must also ensure that we give sufficient weightage to our own self along with the weightage we wish to give to the other person in a conversation.

Smile your way:

An easier way to live is to reckon whatever happens to us is justified for the moment when it is happening. Even what we do is justified. The world is not supposed to be perfect at all times. Blaming something or somone consumes the time and energy and that can be utilized in doing something useful. The timelines in the stories scripted by higher powers dictate all the events. We just need to try to understand the world and create a niche for our routine as per our circumstances. The lesser we long for something the lesser we get time to smile. Just trying to understand better will give us lots of opportunities to smile. This will make an habit to smile our way.

Watch or play?

One of the important differences in our mindsets is whether we are more inclined to watch or play in the game movie of life. When you want to play we want to change the script as per our mindsets. When many individuals want to change the scripts, naturally there will be tension and friction. When you want to watch and observe with intensity you understand the depths of some aspects which you are watching and observing. When you watch and observe you will experience some aspects of life like exitements as sense of achievements. You gain some insights and then you want to play. When you play the game you try to acquire comforts and resources to play higher levels. Doing so we experience some different aspects of life like tension, creativity and highs and lows of emotion. As we can clearly see that if we keep trying higher levels of scripting we can never enjoy the show and if we keep just watching and observing we may be outplayed by others. Therefore we must have careful balance between watching and playing depending on our circumstances. One more aspect to keep in mind is to watch and observe ourselves especially about how our mind works along with other aspects of this marvelous creation.

Problems are opportunities:

Every problem is an opportunity for getting more problems. If we have solved lots of problems in life, most of us expect some reward. But if we are exceptional in doing something than our higher powers will give more of similar work. The rewards like appreciation and promotions are side effects. Suppose we become expert in solving one type of problems, we should expect some other type of problems. This is because our higher powers work on many different domains. Therefore if we reckon we have a very peaceful life, it is just because of one of the following two reasons.

a) No time or effort justified for testing the whole lot due to lower manpower with higher powers.

b) Our present peaceful role is part of a bigger story.

Therefore one of our main expectations in life should be to face all types of problems.

How to face challenging situations:

The following points help in facing challenging situations.

1. Challenging situations loses some power over us if we expect them before coming. Therefore, if we expect negative situations regularly with the mindset that I will first accept them and then find suitable solutions for the immediate term, medium term and long term these situations will not overwhelm us.

2. When the intensity of questioning the mind for solutions is very low, due to more bandwidth availability and more time to process (due to slow process for low priority jobs) more options will be considered for obtaining the result and the same will be more accurate.

3. Concidering the above we should regularly strive to reduce the priority or downplay those aspects that overwhelm us. In other words our desires and fears should be at the right level which just prompts action in a slow and steady process instead of in a hurry. This requires regular mental inputs.

Basic instincts:

The three basic instincts of our life are desire, security and peace. Our instincts for desire (for self importance, pleasure and comforts) and security (power, accumulation and safety) are two sides of the same coin (towards path of greed). Life is best when we are at the circumferential surface of the coin, which may be called instinct for peace (towards path of satisfaction). The illusion of satisfaction drives the greed. Careful balance between the three surfaces of the coin is a must for a smooth journey in this life. Both ignorance and full indulgance in any of the three aspects will cause problems for all. All our problems are due to our instincts that run riots.

Importance of self-respect and humility:

One of the most important things to achieve and preserve is our self-respect. Self-respect is more directly related to our happiness than any other quality. Everything that we do should be done in such a way that the self-respect is maintained. The level of self-respect should be based on the sound foundation of knowledge. True knowledge always comes with humility. Self-respect and humility are the two qualities that keep other things in balanced. Self-respect, when explored in depth will keep us balanced and not allow us to be devious. Most of our unhappiness is due to our cravings which lead us to do or expect things which affects our self-respect. When we cherish and prioritize self-respect along with humility, we fill in the gap in our personality and will do just that which is needed. All cravings for external aspects are at the cost of our self-respect. Giving too much importance to anything or anybody is also at a cost of our self-respect. The best way to maintain self-respect along with humility is to consider everyone and all groups are equal and unique. This will make us perceive neither inferior nor superior to anybody. Maintaining self-respect  motivates us to work smarter and develop better relationships. Self-respect is indeed a great support in carrying out our activities when it is coupled with humility. Knowledge is a great contributor to self-respect and humility, when the former is fully developed, where as half knowledge leads to arrogance and lack of humility. We need to be careful about self-respect and not to be confused with stubbornness. Self-respect cannot be an excuse for laziness and stubbornness. We need to earn the self-respect by our refinement and not by  respecting ourselves in spite of not trying to do our best or without gaining adequate knowledge. Without proper reason and supportive facts or proper knowledge there can be only illusion of reality and not true self-respect.

Honesty and Integrity:

Three points about honesty and integrity:

1. Some of us think if others do not know about our dishonesty, then there is no problem with being dishonest. Higher powers are always watching us. We will never know how and when they will decide about dealing with our dishonesties. Honesty with our own selves must be the aim at the beginning and later try to have uniform character.

2. Some of us think if we are very honest all good things will happen to us. Honesty is not like black or white. It is more about our evaluation of truth based on right priorities of related aspects. We need to be practical and examine the intentions behind the issue. A lie for a greater good for the world may be better than hard truth that  destroys the interest of the world. Even this is not in black or white. We need to look at many aspects including the likely plan of the higher powers as per the current timelines. When we are in doubt, we should carefully analyze about the pros and cons for being honest. This should take into concideration aspects like the impact on others, our relation ship with higher powers, consequence to ourselves,  our guilt etc. We need to sometimes put ourselves in our higher powers' shoes to understand about what is right and what is wrong. Without a basic trust on our higher powers we cannot live properly. 

3. Our higher powers know that it is difficult to be perfect. If we put in our best effort to try to understand what is is the right way and bring about small improvements then there is no problem. Being free from guilt is very important. 

Importance of empathy:

Empathy is a quality which helps to not only us to be happy but also helps others to be happy. This is the most underrated emotion. This stems from the fact that we remember only selective aspects in our life. We do not consider how immature we were earlier when judging others or not relating to others. While showing empathy we can leverage all our negative experiences when we come across similar experiences in others. This way we can transform our negative experiences into positive ones.

One important aspect to remember is that life is a journey and not a destination. In a journey ups and downs are natural. If we stay together the journey will be better for everyone. One important parameter to know whether we empathize with others is to ask ourselves whether we see more similarities or differences between ourselves and others. At any point if we see any difference we cannot empathize. So if we study in depth we will notice that empathy and humility are closely related. In fact empathy goes one step forward.

Two main qualities for success:

To be balanced and an improver are the two of the most  important qualities that ensure success. It is like getting better in macro and micro levels. To be balanced is important for managing conflicts of interest between people and among conflicting resources, like time, energy, money, materials etc. To be an improver is important for maintaining progress. The catalysts for being balanced are searching and prioritizing minds. The ones for improver aspect is understanding and solution finding minds. A common catalyst is a free and calm mind. If one has attained these qualities then that itself is success. The other things are the side effects of being successful.

One of the important tips to be balanced is to regularly say to ourselves that we are constantly monitored by number of higher powers with different interests for our thinking and action. 

Few other tips are to regularly ask ourselves the following:

1. What can I explore something new today?

2. Are my priorities in life in order?

3. Am I neglecting some major area in this world?

Some of the tips to be an improver is to have a calm mind and say to ourselves statements like the following:

1. There is a solution to all problems.

2. There is always a better solution.

3. There is always a chance for correction.

4. There is always a hidden defect.

5. There is always a chance to relax.

Peace with oneself:

Weird and exaggerated extrapolations of our thoughts happen in our minds. To be conscious of such thoughts and downplaying them is a very important endeavor, if we have to maintain peace with ourselves. It also helps to know in which areas our mental bandwidth is more utilized and fine tune them by downplaying aspects in those areas. We need to ensure that we consciously give inputs to our minds to avoid its straying here and there. Lastly we need to prioritize peace and free time over other things depending on our conditions. For example when we are young we need to invest more time and effort on our careers. Later as we are relatively comfortable we should prioritize peace and number of present good time moments.

Points of Attention:

One of the important parameters that determine the quality of our lives is, in what patterns we give attention to various aspects of life. An important aspect about this is whether our attention pattern is always random or it is based on some study and research. Our points of attention is very important in determining our mental state and ability to work. For example, we may have lots of problems but if our attention is on a particular solution or endeavor then those problems wont cause impediments to our work. We should be regularly conscious of where our minds are pointed and make efforts to correct if it is in deviation from our plans. The only problem in controlling our points of attention is the overwhelming importance we give to certain aspects of our lives. A general tip is to explore things in width (many) and depth (core) based on right priorities, without getting overwhelmed by anything. The moment we try to monetize our ideas we will lose some attention on exploring. So, desire to grow rich also come at great opportunity cost of lower quality of life. Another tip is the fact that familiarity leads to boredom. Therefore we should try to think about something new everyday.

Bottom line is to aim to have right points of attention in our limited life.

Our major responsibility:

Our major responsibility is to keep configuring ourselves in a better way based on our experiences.  Therefore, the most important endeavor in our life is to understand the relative and absolute priorities of various aspects of life, to translate the above into our priorities and goals as per our circumstances and to spend time and effort accordingly in those areas in a meaningful way. We do this to make ourselves capable of doing what is needed to be done, rather than getting end results. Regarding priorities a good example is to have righteousness and peace above profit and prosperity. Giving more attention to getting things which are not fully under our control causes lots of wastage in terms of time and effort. Therefore, our major objectives should be to explore and learn instead of only getting things for ourselves. The fruits of our actions depend on various factors. Therefore, I strongly feel the responsibility for our sustainence is on our higher powers because they are more aware of the conditions at both micro and macro levels and can best decide about  our occupations depending on our configuration and circumstances.

First acceptance and then response:

Our creators or higher powers develop conditions for various diseases to provide seriousness and challenging situations for us and to learn to face the situations in a better way besides for handling our karma. Similarly if someone is harsh with us we need to face the person in a better way. To do this we have to accept that bitterness is a reality, which has to be faced in improved ways. If we accept bigger problems like diseases we should also accept smaller ones like harsh people. Moreover, the harsh behavior could be for various reasons that are not known to us. The reason could be either person's karma or the karma of the group. Therefore, our attention shouldn't be only on our hurt, but on handling the situation in a justified and polite way. The acceptance of negative behavior helps us to handle the situations better. Like we have expectations and acceptance for good things we should also develop acceptance and expectations the for not so good things.

Right proportions:

We feel that some emotions and characteristics are bad and some are good but it is the intensity of the emotions and characteristic which matter. At right proportion of intensities all are beneficial. For example at a very small level, sadness, jealousy, anger enhances the spice in life. Too much happiness, achievements and pleasures make us overthinking and affects bandwidth. Little bit of tension provides motivation, whereas excess of it leads to anxiety. Some level of intelligence leads to creativity, whereas too much leads to boredom, if not interspersed will failures. Right level of love towards children leads to happiness, whereas too much of it will spoil them, if not corrected with some seriousness. Some level of ambitious nature results in motivation, while too ambitious nature will lead to disappointments and stress. The bottom line is that we need to fine tune our nature based on the necessary qualities by having the optimum level of qualities instead of absolute or zero levels.

Assumptions from inadequacy:

Our mind makes various assumptions due to lack of data during our initial days. Due to these assumptions we provide incorrect priorities or importance (usually towards higher side) to various aspects of life. Since we are not aware of the assumptions we believe our perceptions to be true and they dont get corrected. The skewness in our perceptions depend on our environment in the initial days and later on it depends on the cues we obtain for the correction of our behaviour. When the skewness don't get corrected they become glaring defects. However, we still do not realize our defects due to our focus on blaming others or situations. Most of our perceptions are somewhat skewed because there is always some gaps introduced by the assumptions, which are not fully corrected by our mental inputs. Therefore, besides taking care of our basic instincts of survival we need to continually fill the gaps in our knowledge by providing mental inputs. Most of the knowledge that is needed to fill in the gaps of our memories come from philosophy. 

How to develop an innovative mind?

One of the major drawbacks in our minds, which is also true for any computing systems, is that they consider only the information available in the system  and does not guess the information not available in it. This drawback causes us to react instantly to situations instead of looking into all of the possible intentions, causes, effects and solutions of the situations. The mind does the calculations, but gets overwhelmed by the priority we give to ourselves, our expectations and our fears and because of this, the other relevant factors get neglected. 

For example if one is facing a challenging situation, there could be a number of intentions, reasons and solutions for the situation, but due to our ego and expectations the only thing that is perceived is that the person is a threat and the solution is to attack. Only when we keep telling ourselves that all threats are opportunities, we will start to realize how the threats are opportunities.

One of the important aspects of good intelligence is to guess all possible answers and rank them as per the likely possibilities, instead of pinpointing the answer. When we get an answer we should not reckon it as the best one, but ask for a better one. We also need to often think that our decisions may be wrong and if it is so why they are wrong. Only when we do not want to accept failures or if we reckon that the stakes are very high, we do not want to reconsider. We do not want to reconsider because we are afraid that we will start worrying. We can get over this problem by downplaying the situations. Even after starting the implementation of the solution, nothing stops us from spending ten to fifteen minutes on alternate strategies. We can really do multitasking if we do not take the tasks too seriously. We need not get immersed into the problems.

Bottom line is that we should keep igniting our curiosity with questioning everything and keep getting new answers. The innovations are often blocked due to lack of attention arising from improper priorities. It is prudent to be inquisitive about all walks of life instead of just career. Another important thing is that the reason for our innovations should not be for any purpose other that the fun of finding solutions, otherwise the purpose will get too much attention and innovations will take a back seat.

Logic, belief and faith:

All realizations start with logic. Instead of reinventing the wheel we believe in someone's  teachings because we develop faith in the person or his group. Whether a scientist talks about an atom or a guru talks about an atman, we believe in it due to the faith in the person or his group. Logic says an intelligent world has to be designed and planned by some entity or entities. That entity or entities know that we will wonder about the creation and come out with a plan for religions. It is a very high likelihood that the creators will invest some effort in the major directions in which the world develops in the respective timelines. Considering the above possibility we may conclude that there is very high possibility that the beliefs and faith are circumstantial and the religions are planned by the creators. Therefore in my mind we should not hate or look down on any religion. They all are very important in developing the story lines and the learning offered. Regarding religion and science, we all know that religion started the teachings of the mind and mind control, which are equally important to study of material and energy and their conversions, It is just because of financial implications science has taken a bigger leap for the time being. We need to realize that there is a cycle of timelines for every aspect for the story it provides and therefore it is prudent to respect each others's communities.

Everlasting insecurities:

Beauty is skin deep and intelligence is circumstantial. But still prejudice is rampant.

It is due to our everlasting insecurities we keep focusing on how to get more rather than trying to understand and realize the truth. We all have studied that our skin color is just a different type of pigmentation. We all read in religion that god likes everyone alike. It comes to our minds that people are different to maintain diversity. We all know that there are more things in common, (apart from wealth) than there are differences between all of us. But our ego always want to establish that we are different and superior than others, just to express our insecurities. Only when reality becomes more important than our insecurities, we change.

Why god consciousness?

God likes us the way we are. This is because if he wanted he could have made us perfect. It is therefore obvious that diversity and story line are more important for him than efficiency and perfection. Defects and learning are more important than successes and achievements. Failures are as important as successes. Therefore if we want to like ourselves the way we are, then we have to be god conscious. We just need to do what needs to be done in the best of our abilities. We are all unique individuals, leading different pathways and doing our jobs as per the story line. If we imagine ourselves as the creator (wear his shoes) and think about what we want from the creation, the above things will be obvious. If the story line has to continue for a long time, then the characters need to be diverse (with varieties and imperfections). The above points make it obvious that we should not feel inferior due to our imperfections. These imperfections are exactly as planned and are helpful for the learning opportunities that they provide.

Some top priorities and perspectives:

The priorities and perspectives, which we hold in life, are what that defines us. Highest priority is utilization of present moment. The satisfaction at the present moment is very very important. Worries can be postponed. We need to perceive why this moment is satisfactory. The story line is more important than any achievement. The learning opportunities from our failures are more important than the achievements. The sense of understanding is more important that the result of our studies. The achievement of peace is equally important as the achievement of prosperity. Similarly there needs to be a balance between consideration for others and our own well being. Flexibility and acceptance are more important than our expectations. Expectations of negative outcomes are equally important as expectations of positive outcomes. Acceptance of all possibilities in suspense mode is more important than any desired outcome. Diversity and uniqueness of an individual is more important than efficiency and perfection. We may feel these priorities are not correct due to our current mindsets.

Internal Defects:

We are used to finding defects in our external systems and resolving them. In our efforts to develop our external systems we hardly spare time to develop our internal system, the mind. Mind is an important tool which which when developed improves the efficiency of all our endeavors. One of the problems in identifying our internal defects is our ego, which wants to make us believe that we are perfect and all defects are in the external. We need to counter this by saying ourselves that everybody's thinking and actions are defective. There are defects everywhere by design to provide us an interesting learning curve. As with external systems, more we reckon there are defects the more we will find them. We should never reckon that our thoughts and actions are perfect, but realize that there is lots to improve upon. 

Along with presence-of-defects mindset another mindset that helps to improve is I_dont_know_a_lot. The feeling of confidence that we know a lot hampers our ability to find our own defects. More we reckon ignorance, more the inward flow of knowledge

Mistaken Doer-ship:

One of the major mistakes in our perception is that we reckon we are thinking, feeling and doing, while everything is happening as per the laws of existence. It is this feeling of separation that is the cause of enhanced pleasure and pain for the individual and entertaining stories for the observer. The individuality is okay in one way that it enables interesting stories, but in another way a cause of enhanced suffering. I reckon based on the individual circumstances the laws of existence enables the realization of this fact. When we realize something new, we reckon it is a great achievement but for the experienced higher powers it is all common place. If I write something stupid it is existence expressing it and if it is novel then also it is the existence expressing it. Everything is happening in the story, wherein a particular role is being enacted and are wearing different lenses to for the special effects. The bottom line is that reality is always different than our perceptions and no realization is an individual achievement. There is nothing good or bad. Its all existence. This imperfection of reality is what is called maya in our literature. For the creator there is absolutely no difference whether we have achieved one way or another. All he wants to do is to witness the existence, of which he is a part due to impermanent nature of the stories of existence.

Habits & Mindsets:

If we imagine that our minds have to do a lengthy computation about various aspects of the issue every time it encounters something, we will realize that habit formations are necessary to save time of processing for repeated tasks. Good and bad habits are formed due to repeated perceptions based on the sequence of events put forth to us in the childhood, when the only fewer aspects are realized by us. For example based on an event a child may realize money is important. If an habit is based on this perception, before he realizes peace is important and to be good is important, some negative habits may form. This gets reinforced and forms mindsets, Our personality is nothing but a group of mindsets formed based on how we perceive the environmental pressures. The external pressures are due to the forces exerted by our higher powers based on the roles they want us to play. Fortunate are those people who get the best roles. Few others who are fortunate are those who realize how to form the right mindsets. Mindsets are formed by repeatedly perceiving the solutions to some existing problems. They form patterns and anti-patterns for the problems, based on which we draw solutions to those problems. Some of the common mindsets are growth mindset, peace mindset, opportunistic mindset, negative mindset, worrying mindset, problem solving mindset, winning mindset, equality mindset, superiority mindset, blaming mindset, satisfaction mindset, hopeful mindset,  hopeless mindset, perfection mindset, practical mindset etc. We can inculcate desired mindsets by regularly contemplating on desired qualities we wish to have. Although having right mindsets help us, they do not guarantee success as there is possibility of facing new problems not known to us.

Expectations verses reality:

Our thoughts, feelings and actions, which create memories are projections based  on how our expectations meet reality. Reality is based on everyone's thoughts, feelings and actions of past, present and future, based on how their own expectations meet their own realities. Our expectations solely depend on the relative priorities by which we perceive the various aspects of life in the mind. Thus our expectations are fully under our control where as reality is based on both internal and external controls.  For example if the priority for peace is more than prosperity in our minds and we expect some tension and friction due to competition, we will have better expectations to meet the reality. Even prosperity is needed but at right priority. 

Intelligence is nothing but active memories based on our individual experience of thoughts, feelings and actions of the past. 

So to have good feelings, thoughts, actions and intelligence we need to inculcate right expectations and help others to have right expectations wherever possible. So be aware and spread awareness. We may even alter gods expectations from us if we convince by better logic. Logic really rules. Power tries to stop logical advances, but we should any way try to attain higher logic.

Defining success and being successful 

When we say a person is successful, we reckon that the person has achieved something which very few have achieved. But the word success may be defined as accomplishment of a goal. However, success should not be looked at in absolute terms. In my view the goals and the level of accomplishment of the goal should be based on the resources and  constraints one has and level of difficulty one has been put through. Therefore, in my view, success is understanding ones resources, constraints, objectives, opportunities and risks and acting accordingly. We build ourselves and our companies as products and specifications to market ourselves and our company to improve our chances to attain our individual and group objectives. The resources include our body and intelligence, time, people, money and other assets one has. The constraints include required resources one does not have and any other disability one has. The objectives include achievement of those goals which give contentment. One may be content with very little where as others may not be contented with a billion. This depends on ones mindset. The opportunities include our individual ecosystem. The risks include loss of health, resources and our specification.

Based on the above logic, following conclusions can be drawn. 

1. More one has intelligence and resources the higher should be the objectives for success.

2. One can be successful even  if he or she  is contended doing nothing. Only our mindsets make us perceive otherwise. This way of being successful is easier said than done. Such a person has to improve upon his himself (product) while ignoring the specifications.

3. Success is a relative term and can not be compared with others.

One may put forth an argument that success should be based on contribution to society. Therefore, one can not be successful without doing anything. I want to defend with these points.

1. Not everyone has to contribute. The pace at which we should progress should not be too fast or too slow.

2. If our creators wanted they could have made it too easy for us. In all likelihood there is no scarcity of resources to make this world. However to provide us the learning opportunity and for us to have some seriousness god have inducted some scarcity.  Considering this aspect we should not work too fast or too slow, but just in the pace which ensures good learning process. 

3. Real freedom is to do what one feels interested in, rather than what the society feels each one should do. Based on pros and cons and individual resources and constraints, each individual should chart her journey. Moreover, the diversity of intelligence and other resources make the world interesting and sustainable.

Who defines our own state of success?

Our marks card is our state of success in our institutions' point of view. Our promotions in the company is our success in our company's point of view. The profits in the company is success in the industry's point of view. Apart from these we should have success defined in our own points of view, which considers a small component of weightings to the others point of view and major weightings to our own points of views based on our own constraints in achieving our own goals. Our objectives are not just our career goals but includes various other responsibilities. For example for someone the answers to following questions may define success, in addition to academic and career view points.

How do you face challenges at home?

How do you feel when you are put into difficult situations?

How satisfied are you with your life?

Have you utilized your resources in the best possible way?

What are your constraints and difficulty levels in your life? How are you managing them?

Have you been a responsible towards family and society?

How balanced are you while handling fights?

How many times you smile in a day?

What defines your quality or mindset?

Our own assessment of success is more important than others' points of view because we alone know our constraints and only our own points of view decide about our level of contentment. However, we should be true to ourselves.  This is the minimum requirement for a self appraisal. 

Bottom line: Each one of us are successful as we can only do as per our potential. There are attractive and repulsive forces, which take us away from our potential. If these forces are stronger than our potential, naturally our achievements suffer. So, considering the forces or constraints, each one is successful. All that is needed is just a shift in our perceptions to feel satisfied and successful. The panache for all unsatisfactory experience is to change our perceptions.

P.S. Our feelings of success or failure is ultimately determined by our perceptions. One can perceive success either by doing what our mind reckons as success or one can change the perception directly. It is prudent to thoroughly research and guide the mind about what is success taking into considerations, all the relevant aspects. For example for a person who is facing lots of challenges, just smiling at the end of the day after completing the days work, itself is a great success. Our mind works based on our inputs consciously or unconsciously. Therefore, upgrading our minds with regular inputs is very important. For doing this we need to keep asking ourselves and some one else (Experienced and trustworthy) about right goals for us, along with road maps to achieve them.

Success, failure and right motivation:

Our mind makes various types of assumptions based on the self inputs made by us consciously or unconsciously, which are based on the forces of the  environment provided to us. The assumptions lead us to believe what success is and what failure is. However both success and failure lead us to different paths of uncertainty. If we consider all the relevant facts into consideration there may be a reasonable degree of likelihood that some failures take us to a better path than successes. If this is so we should give less priority to our successes and failures and thus not get overly enthralled or disappointed by successes or failures respectively . Downside to this is some loss of motivation. This can be compensated by love for our subject and work than the achievements. If we regularly keep repeating, I love marketing, or I love management or I love creating things etc., depending on our career goals, we will notice a level of increased concentration and motivation for the subject or the work we are doing. We usually get it wrong about what we should directly desire for and what we should indirectly get due to our right desires.

Money and Career:

Having sufficient money is vital, however being attracted to it is a problem. It is just as important as getting water to drink. We do not get attracted to water like we do for money. We store only as much water as necessary for the day. This is because we are sure to get it whenever we want. Similarly if we have sufficient money for our living and retirement, we should be satisfied with what we have got and concentrate on other aspects of to life, to learn and experience new things, which money cannot help us do, like upgrading ourselves philosophically, learning science, arts, commerce or philanthropy etc. Our bandwidth is limited, therefore if we stop giving importance to that which is saturated, then only there will be place for new things. More importantly our lifespans are limited and we do not have lots of time to just try to get just lots of money and not utilize our mental resource to the fullest potential. Due to the above mentioned reasons I feel one should have three or more different careers in life if possible.

Bottom line: Money is power, no doubt, but when we start giving it too much importance, it loses some power due to blockage of mental bandwidth, leading to ignorance of other larger perspectives and failure due to this.

Nature of our work and innovations:

When we are doing any work, we are actually doing application of logical operations on a resource. Resource could be our mind, our body, computer software, time, machines, plants, materials, people etc. We go to college to learn about established logical operations to get a head start. If we concentrate on the mind and tune it to reason out effectively then new ideas will come out at a faster rate. The key here is to keep enough mental band width and have higher priority to understanding the logic than to achieving something. By fine tuning the mind with right priorities we can guide the thinking process of the mind. For example if we have more priority for enjoyment, achieving results or worrying about things that may happen than for understanding our job, considerable mental bandwidth is is lost in thinking about the former aspects. It also helps if we are mindful about the operations being done and have a small questioning whether there is a better way. Bottom line is that whether it is philosophy, medicine, engineering, law, commerce or any field the one with access to resources, logical mind and understanding of right priorities of various aspects of life is more likely to do innovations and become super successful. So in the long run one with better idea of how to fine tune the thinking process will do better than one with just established skill sets provided there is reasonable saturation in the operations and access to resources are similar for both.

Intelligence, Management and Leadership:

Intelligence applied to some resources lead to creation and others to management.

Intelligence applied to Intelligence leads to leadership.

With the same resources some are successful while others are not due to difference in their Intelligence.

Intelligence is corrupted by incorrect priorities during perceptions. This happens due to faulty mindsets created by the environment.

We face bandwidth problem when we perceive things with high priorities due to heavy and repeated thinking.

While intelligence improves when perceptions happen with lesser and lesser priorities the memories fade out faster.

Correction of intelligence is a long drawn affair as we have to work on our cumulative intelligence.

Inefficiency and lack of intelligence:

In my view the primary reason for mental inefficiency or lack of intelligence is perception with too much intensity. During childhood if one is made to perceive grave or attractive things he or she will become habituated to think with high intensity. We all make a mistake of inducing excitement into the child's personality due to our excitement at child birth. Instead of doing this it is better to be as normal as possible and give right measures of casual inputs.

When we think with high intensity the following things will happen.

1. Thinking is heavier with accompanying feelings.

2. Mind often becomes uncontrollable because we are sabotaged by it.

3. Mental bandwidth will be to occupied due to heavy and repeated thinking.

4. Due to bandwidth problem fewer processing is possible and we loose relevant perspectives.

5. Due to fewer processing we will react instinctively to things. This will lead to impatient behavior and lack of patience and  concentration.

6. Since such a mind is never satisfied there is a void in the personality, leading to objects of pleasure.

7. Such a mind is easily attracted to enticements and repulsed by fear. 

If a kid is made aware of how intensity of perception affects the intelligence he or she will take care of this aspect and remain efficient.

P.S.: I strongly feel that at birth we are more or less same and then depending on the needs of the the environment, the higher powers develop our intelligence as per the particular type of role they want us to play. This is not based on intuition but on research of how my behaviors and intelligence changed gradually based on contemplation and other experiences in life. The purpose of this post is to have respect for non achievers and have greater tolerance for the underprivileged.

Priorities of Perceptions:

Why do we perceive differently?

The simple answer to this is that the way of perceptions depend on our habits, which dependent on the environment, which is different for each individual. Even if two siblings stayed in the same house, the interactions they have with people differ. Hence the difference in habit formation and perceptions. We all perceive with different intensities due to our habits. When the intensities are high we will only look at one dominant aspect of the event. As we perceive with lesser intensities, due to more bandwidth availability we look at more aspects related to the issue. There are two directions in which the search for options happen. The deeper perspectives and the lateral perspectives. Our perceptions vary in three ways. The perception with perspectives in depth, the perception with lateral perspectives and the intensity of perception. As mentioned earlier when the intensity of perception is high, the related perspectives are lost due to heavy thinking leading due to over utilization of mental bandwidth. Our priorities of perception is based on relative importance of various aspects in life like peace, prosperity, ego, desires, fears, health, education, sex, family, career and various other things. As mentioned earlier these are based on habits formed while percieving during our interactions with the world. To break this habit we need to make fresh better habits by mental inputs or perceptions.

Our priorities of perceptions for different aspects are related to one another. If money is too much important than we ourselves are that much less important compared to money. If we are ourselves high in importance we should not be dependent on anything or anybody. If health is very very important then that much money becomes less important. If physical health is all important happiness is that much less important. If happiness is all you need nothing else should be too important. But righteousness is more important than being happy. Therefore to be good is top priority. But things other than being good are also required in life. Therefore we must have appropriate weightings for other things, with being good as the top priority. We usually have our intelligence with the priorities of perceptions as unknowingly developed by our our environment during our early ages. If everything is in track then it is good. If we are not happy then we need to redevelop our priorities of perceptions. This is a long drawn process as it involves gradually updating all the past perceptions. This process involves first contemplating on those principles that quieten the mind, followed by those principles that correct the skewed intelligence.

Errors in perception:

Our perceptions are correct only when some of the corrections are made. Few of the major corrections are mentioned below.

1. Differences between people are at the minimum.

2. Differences between places are at the minimum.

3. Differences between occupations are minimum.

4. Differences between products of same category are minimum.

5. Differences between organizations of same category are minimum.

All differences are due to attraction and repulsion to one or two aspects without considering the majority of relevant aspects. Actually if all considerations are taken into account there are no differences. Such corrections enable us to be humble and at the same time being confident.

People give too much importance to different things due to attraction and repulsion. Some of the items for which we give too much importance are mentioned below. When we give too much importance to something, we fail to give proper relevance to rest of the world. This results in errors in perceptions. Some errors are more harmful than the others. However to be less erroneous we need to not give too much importance to any of the items mentioned below.

Items to which  exaggerated importance is given by us: Money, Comforts, Pleasures, Self, Sufferings, Misfortunes, Insult, Guilt, Other-people (with super characteristics), God, Celebrities, Knowledge, Innovation, Education, Career, Celebrity-status, Achievements, Righteousness,  Logic etc.

Who am I?

I am not what my mind perceives based on its observations of its thinking and seeing me.  On deeper thinking about the nature of our minds and body, we will know who we really are. When we are babies due to involuntary perceptions we assume that we are the bodies and are subsequently so much engrossed in the external world that we never think what we really are and gradually our personality is set. Unless regularly corrected till the cumulative impressions are updated the personality remains. 

There are two aspects in our thinking. The first one is automatic extrapolation of memory from mind and sense organs. This part may be called as a projective mind, which provides us the input to act upon. This part streams stories from the active memory based on our desires and fears. The other one is the endorsement or rejection of the thought based on the active memory, leading to action. This part may be called as the reactive mind or subconscious mind, which handles output based on the inputs from the projective mind.  Both these type of mind appear to be happening in our control but it is not so. Both these work involuntarily. We cannot be what automatically happens to us, without our control. What we are is a small window of consciousness which allows us to be a witness of the two types of thought processes mentioned above and suggest a process of correction to the reactive mind. Since our bodies are not hundred percent in our control, we are not the body. It is only our wrong perceptions which make us believe that we are the body. The body is just like a robot made by our creators. We are just the consciousness with a will, for suggesting the correction process of the automated thinking processes. In other words we are just the managers of the automated human beings.  The form which is functioning is the physical form and the form that is witnessing is not a physical form in the ordinary sense but is of a different dimension and totally different from the physical form. This form is not available for perception and can only perceive the other forms. It can witness the physical forms, but not itself. 

P.S.:  The above conclusions are drawn out of contemplation or extrapolation by the minds of people. There is high possibility of something more to it than what is available in our collective knowledge. We can only progressively improve our knowledge based on contemplative research. 

Types of wealth:

There are broadly five types of wealth. They are money and financial assets, health, knowledge, human relations and the psychological wealth. It is prudent to invest wisely in all the five types of wealth depending on one's circumstances. In the initial stage of life knowledge is most important. There after we need to invest time and energy to earn a living and save for future. After an age of around 30 years, physical and mental health should be given importance along with other aspects. Needless to stay that our human relationship is very important for our growth and maturity. The most neglected type of wealth is the psychological wealth. Psychological wealth helps us to withstand the ups and downs of life without affecting us. It is nothing but attaining psychological state which enables good mental health even under lots of external pressure. Psychological wealth is attained by practicing philosophy. Practicing philosophy is nothing but providing regular mental inputs to develop intelligence which rectifies mental defects which are exposed under pressure situations.

Top attractions and repulsions:

1. Power and status 

2. Excellent career

3. Sufficient Health and energy

4. Happiness and pleasures 

5. Good and timely food and sleep

6. Regular appreciations and success

7. Sufficient money and comforts

8. Peaceful life 

9. Good relationships 

Do not expect the above. Everybody will not get all of above. Should just be grateful for what we get for the duration we have them.

Instead, just relish uncertainty, challenges and self-improvements.

Freedom, peace and prosperity:

Along with good health we have to choose the relative weightages for freedom, prosperity and peace. Peace is nothing but reduced mental activity which is something like your itchiness is gone. Freedom is nothing but when you are doing what your free will suggests and are not guided by fears or any compulsion. Prosperity enables comforts along with vicarious sense of heightened self. If the weighting for prosperity is too high we have to compromise with lessened freedom and peace. If the weighting for peace is too high we have to compromise with lessened prosperity and freedom. If the weightage for freedom is too high we have to compromise with lessened peace and prosperity. If we have sufficient prosperity then freedom and peace are priceless. You can have freedom without peace but cannot have peace without freedom. The best way to get freedom is to align our will with the will of our best understanding of highest powers and accept whatever has happened. In other words we need to have clear sense of direction.

Peace, pleasure and prosperity:

When we are born, after initial teething problems, we are in peaceful stage. Our aim at that point is to maximize happiness. Soon we acquire the desire for pleasure and comforts to seek happiness. We understand the importance of prosperity to satisfy the desire for pleasure and comforts. Then in the purpose of getting prosperity we some how loose our peace. Then even after getting prosperity, which helps to satisfy our desires for pleasure and comforts, we are not able to maximize the number of good moments due to habit of improper thinking, which in turn destroys peace. The problem was that we did not give importance to what we already had and took it for granted that we will not loose what have. For most people the absence of peace is not reckoned at all, even though there are many bad moments because of this. They are only in the illusion that prosperity will help to maximize good moments in the future. In the bargain they fail to get the good moments in the present even though they have reasonable levels of prosperity. One fine day the lucky ones realize the importance of peace and turn to spirituality. The luckier ones realize how to be joyful at all times by repeatedly prioritizing joy over other aspects in their life.

Progress, peace and performance

Although action or performance is vital for survival it is the thinking which is more important than action, when survival is guaranteed. This is because peace is more important than action when survival is guaranteed because peace helps in conservation of energy and action does the opposite. However, progress is more important than peace because progress provides a sense of direction. Therefore, thinking for progress is more important than action. The bottom line is that quality thinking for many minutes should be interspersed with optimum level of action to maintain progress, peace and survival.

Progress>Peace>Performance 

Poverty and Diseases:

We all feel that those having lots of money and comforts with super powers are the most luckier ones. However, on inquiry one will realize that having problems and challenges are the most important aspects in our lives. Life with less challenges is a mediocre life. Poverty and diseases are therefore necessary component of a successful life. Living a life in poverty and trying to complete the responsibilities itself is success. Therefore coming out of poverty or never being in poverty is not the only success. Completing our responsibilities with satisfaction in poverty and diseased condition is greater success than never being in poverty or diseased. This is because success should be determined by both the external as well as internal constraints in achieving the result. If one starts looking from the perspective of highest powers these things are obvious. The results as such are not important, but the constraints are more important. If we do not keep getting higher constraints, it is like studying in the same class for many years and improving the grades. This is not success. Its all in the mindset. The attraction to and repulsion from certain aspects of lives at various intensities make the interesting, challenging and diverse. There is something good for everyone if one has an open mind and free from distractions. How one wants to see the world should be up to oneself. That is real freedom. To see the world bereft of attractions and repulsions.

I reckon some of the readers will not like this post. It is just because of the fearful mindset accumulated regarding poverty and disease. This can be overcome by repeated contemplation that these are not really bad, but are just like higher weights added during weightlifting. We just assume that weights can be added only externally and not internally. But in life constraints are both inner and outer and the successful result is to lift the weight with joy. All our resources are just the means or supports and not the end. When we pass away it is just like end of a lap.

Bottom line: In life there are weights, both internal and external, distractions, both attraction and repulsion, supports, both internal and external. We have to choose to develop skills for adding supports, bearing weights and identifying/managing distractions. Higher weights lead to higher class. Support when excess than what is necessary lead to distractions and lead to lower level of success if not balanced by higher weights.

Problems and Karmas, my view:

I reckon that problems and misfortunes happen for two reasons, testing us and teaching us. When we are in the right direction they are for testing us otherwise for teaching us a lesson. Depending on our capabilities, our intentions and the story lines these are carefully planned by our higher powers. In my view, the supporting fact for validation for each plan of activity is our karma. Therefore, we when we encounter them, we should check our motives, accept and learn from them.

How to recover from sufferings?

One of the best way to recover from sufferings is to consider the world as an film and one is doing just a role. Depending on intensity, belief and duration of contemplation on the above our sufferings will keep reducing. 

After all this world is imaginative mental projection based on a dynamic database. There is no other way this world, so vast and with so much intricacies and complexities could have been developed based on our best understanding. Therefore, we are actually the one who is imagining, disguised as our bodies. Once one keeps realizing this to the extent that it becomes his or her reality, the suffering is gone. 

The real reason for suffering is that we take this world and ourselves too seriously.

How to control happiness?

Happiness is the feeling based on the decision made about the direction and magnitude perception of the current thought. If the direction of a thought as decided by us is negative the same feeling leads to negative bodily reactions, leading to sadness. The duration of the feeling of happiness or sadness and their intensity depends on the frequency and duration of its repetition, which depends on the decision made about the magnitude of the thought. In other words some things make you happy or sad because we give importance to that thing. 

One way to control happiness which we all do is to chase things which give us happiness and avoid things which give us sadness. This way of trying to achieve happiness may be called the frontend way. Due to conflict of interest with others it becomes difficult to achieve happiness in this straight forward way. 

Another way to control happiness is to check its direction and decide that everything is for good. If it is difficult to do this at least we should not be sure that a particular thought or event is bad. The magnitude of perception of the thought will be low if we are not sure about it. It is good to be not sure of the consequences than to assume them.

The third way to control happiness is to reduce the magnitude or intensity of all perceptions. This way the mind will also be peaceful. 

The second and the third ways of controlling happiness, which may be called the back end approaches, require regular contemplation on some statements which reduce the intensity of our thoughts and also keep our thoughts in the positive domain. These two approaches take a longer time to start giving results and the benefits are progressive, as in this approach the cumulative impressions needs to be changed. 

Tips for happiness:

The primary reason why we are not happy is for the obvious reason that our expectations are not met. While we all try various ways to get what we want, we are not flexible enough to keep adjusting our expectations. Most of us go so far with our desires that correcting our way of perceptions become a long drawn affair. We need to realize that we are unique individuals with different paths as defined by our higher powers based on our individual environments. We need to understand what is expected from us rather than us expecting what we want. We need to also realize that rich or poor, healthy or week, intelligent or dumb, good looking or otherwise, everyone gets their share of challenges based on their role in life. Therefore we cannot pinpoint on our expectations to be happy. It is our conditioning which leads us into sorrow. If we make a decision that come what may I will learn to be happy without any external requirements, we will find a way. The bottom line is we can perceive everything the way we want if we practice in the right direction for a few months. For this we need to keep questioning us in a smart way. The journey is as enjoyable as with any external innovation.

If we strongly believe and regularly repeat these statements we will start becoming happier. These things take time as they work on cumulative impressions in the mind.

1. Every sunrise and sunset gives each breath in me the maximum happiness. Other sources of happiness are temporary.

2. I don't know most of the things. So I will not judge.  I will just witness everything to see how things evolve.

3. Anything can happen and I will try to first accept everything and if needed try to take some action. Problems and misfortunes are there in life to provide us a learning curve.

4. Like in all people I have many defects. These are there to provide me a platform to find those defects and rectify them. Each one of them are like gold, which I will patiently mine.

5. I will try to look for something good in all difficult situations.

Types of living entities:

There are broadly three types of living entities. They are the creators, influencers and citizen.

Influencers are entities with powers to manage the world. There are broadly two types of influencers. One that do gods work of creating interesting stories. The other type mainly work towards reducing hardships of people. They do the work for the mankind. All those people who primarily do not work for humankind do the work for god one way or another. The one thing that controls the direction is the move from lower logic to higher logic. There are various logical paths for an individual issue based on the priorities attributed to related aspects of the issue. The right priority of aspects is the highest logic and other priorities as ranked hierarchically. Even god has to obey the logic. When the direction is disturbed god has the own way to bring things to track. Those who work for god are mostly differentiators. Those who work for humankind as mostly integrators. The power in normal sense is with the differentiators. But they as often crumpled by the higher logic of integrators.

Citizen is the core of human, animal and plant kingdom. There are three types of citizen. They are intelligent, interesting and instrumental. All those who are not very intelligent and not very interesting are people predominantly instrumental in sustaining the world. Proper proportion of these types will make it progressive, Interesting and sustaining world. All the three types are interesting to our creators. To him we are all equal and unique. So, its all about individual and group needs that dictate the proceedings. 

Rational Decision-making:

Steps for making rational decisions

1. Find out all possible alternatives

2. Find pros and cons for each alternatives

3. Give weightage for each pros and cons on the same total.

4. Summation of pros and cons for each alternatives

5. Calculate % of pros out of (pros + cons) total points.

6. Choose the one with highest pros %

We need to give sufficient time and effort in finding alternatives, pros, cons and the weightings. Usual problem we will encounter is that we give exaggerated weightings to some aspects and non consideration of some important pros and cons. Many times intangible aspects add up to a substantial weighting. It will not be an understatement to say that our whole life depends on finding alternatives and apportionment of right weightings to them.

Our life, art, science or sport:

How we generally perceive our life has a lot of bearing on how we look at things. In my view our life is more of an art than it is science or sport. The major aspects of a art are creativity, diversity and interest. The major aspects of science are knowledge, utility and efficiency. The major aspects of a sport are skills, winning and rules. Although some of the aspects are overlapping, the above aspects are as their predominant aspects. If we look at life we cannot say it is science as life is more about creativity, diversity and interest than knowledge, utility and efficiency. Our creators have made us all as diverse and interesting instead of very efficient and intelligent. They have expressed their creativity more than expressing their power. Moreover they have not made the things in such a way that their utility is maximum. They wanted us to use our creativity to make the things useful. Life is not a sport as there are no rigid rules. There are no rigid groupings or teams. Moreover objective of winner is not clearly defined.

For some life may be business or suffering. But these are subsets of predominantly an art. Life cannot be business as there are more things in life than just business. Moreover managing a business is more of an art than science or sport. Although there is competition like in sport, there are means like merger and acquisition to manage competitions in business. Business is not science although the one thing that binds everything viz. logic is needed in any business. If we agree that life is art the implications are that we need to appreciate small nuances in life, not take anything too seriously and consider our life as a role that we play according to our individual mindsets to create interesting stories. On the contrary if we think life is science or sport we will tend to overdo the things causing burnout. It is because of fear of not getting enough resources, (which leads to greed) that we think that it is science, sport, business or suffering.

Goals to Achieve:

There are many aspects or goals to achieve and realize in this life. I have listed ten important ones below. Those who are not able to realize some of these (for example first five from below list) may try to do well in other aspects (like last five in the below list).

1. Realizing  Academic knowledge

2. Career and professional development

3. Realizing creativity and skills

4. Realizing innovation

5. Realizing economic goals

6. Realizing family goals

7. Realizing Social goals

8. Realizing Values (Kindness, patience etc.)

9. Developing intelligence (EQ)

10. Realizing peace and happiness

What is good to have in our life?

Apart from air, water and space, it is good to have the following things in our life. Although we should not expect any of these, it is good to have those. We need to have a right proportion of these. Some of these are in our control and some of these are not in our control. The problem is that our wants are not balanced. If we give equal importance to all the ten, then we are in good position. We should not overlook an important item out of the items below:

1. Energy/health 

2. Time/age/free time

3. Intelligence/wisdom

4. Knowledge/experience

5. Career/Business/Routine

6. Family/acquaintances/relatives 

7. Money/property/resources

8. Psychology/EQ

9. Reach/followers

10. Entertainment/pleasures

Mindfulness:

Our mind automates low priority and repeated tasks. This effects our mindfulness when engaging in such activities. Therefore to be more mindful, we should consciously introduce variations in our routine and also try to give higher priorities to the job in hand may it be eating, driving, cooking, working or any such activity. It helps in this endeavor to perceive every activity on equal basis when we are not engaging in anything. Only when we are not alert due to expectation of known positive results we will not be mindful. Therefore it also helps if we have a slight mental disposition that we may not do our present activity in the best possible way due to defects present in our intelligence.  When we are mindful while engaging even in trivial activities we will relish the small improvements which we bring about in those activities. Our objective should be to have maximum number of good moments out of our total time available in our control. To upgrade ourselves we need to dynamically fine tune the priorities of perception of various aspects of life according to our needs. Since our mind works on cumulative impressions it takes some period of practice to bring about the required changes.

Contemplation and Meditation:

There are two ways to control the thinking activity of our minds.

1. Concentration on something deeply to avoid other thoughts. Easier way of practicing this is to chant a mantra like OM or doing some activity with full devotion like counting the beads. This is the practice of meditation. This is very helpful when you want to make the mind calm instantly.

2. Alter the thinking process by regular  mental inputs of some facts that prioritizes and slows down the thoughts. Easier way of doing this is to write down some statements and reading them regularly. We can fine tune the mental inputs as per our needs for improvements of intelligence. We can observe our thoughts and search for defects and derive the mental input statements and contemplate on them. This is the practice of contemplation. This has the power of mental transformation to great heights. However it is a slow process as the mental inputs need to change the already present undesirable mental impressions accumulated previously by the mind.

The problem of life:

There are broadly three view points in life depending on whether you are just an observer (for e.g. God) or a powerful entity with hunger (for e.g. Cheetah) or powerless entity (for e.g. a Deer) with security problem. If the observer is powerful like our creators (powerful without hunger), then thou must be having a balanced view, which is necessary for survival of the ecosystem. The cheetahs want more preys and the deer want more safety and peace. The deer will be more straight forward as they can justify their problem in a straightforward way. But they have no enduring solution for their problem. Even though the cheetahs need to prey they have to face the guilt of causing pain to the deer. However,  the cheetahs are crucial to maintain balance in the ecosystem. It must be understood that without the pains there wont be seriousness in the world.

Always in life there are just a handful of observers, a few thousands of cheetahs and many millions of deer. The cheetahs have some way of dividing the deer groups into smaller ones by misdirecting them.

The deer usually choose is to just keep grazing and not think about the problem till a cheetah is seen.

Managing Stress:

The number one cause of stress is that we feel stuck without choices. Having plan B increases choice and hence reduces stress. We need to work at front end and back end. Front end is to take steps for success. Back end is for increasing options. Following is a list of few factors that increases and reduces stress. The factors that increases and decreases stress do not match up in a row. If we could think about each one in the list and try to give weightings out of 10, it will help to reduce stress. Once in a quarter we may revisit this.

Reduces stress       Increases stress

--------------------         ----------------------

Focus on task        Focus on career

Plan B         Too much importance to role

Focus to improve     Focus on results

Satisfied                   Over expectations

Humility                    Inaction in pressure

patience                    Fearful

Flexibility                    Comparing others

Accepting failures    Arrogance   

Confidence                Incompetence 

Trust                 Taking words too seriously         

Faith                             Serious personality

Core expertise    Flattering personality

Continuous learning   Lifestyle conscious 

Good networking        Perfectionism 

Good values                Judgmental

Games and hobbies   Insecure

Minimalism                   People conscious

General awareness     Dependency

Broad minded        Showing off too much 

Importance of having a balance in life: 

One of the biggest misconceptions that we have is that good deeds will lead to good results and bad deeds will lead to bad results. In my view for each actions both positive and negative future results happen. Some of the aspects, which are subtle and far reaching are usually ignored. Our focus is on a few major expectations and only those results which relate to those expectation are considered by us and many subtle and far reaching aspects are ignored. Based on above considerations it appears to be that we should have as small a foot print as possible to keep the overall collective karmas in the manageable level. We are often very confident of our intelligence but our knowledge in the understanding of the world in its totality is very limited. For example we are not sure of the next big challenge which we have to face. It may come in any form. Only a child who doesn't know anything and doesn't do major errors in presumption will be better suited to explore the world at all times. As we learn new things we also deviate from reality to a larger extent in many other aspects due to undue importance given to the aspects we have just learnt. This happens because whenever we learn a great new thing we feel that new thing is the whole world. In other words our intelligence is usually skewed due to the fact that we do not take all relevant aspects into considerations while perceiving an apparently great thing. The side effects may be huge but will manifest after a long duration. Therefore in my opinion to play safe we should do only that much which is absolutely necessary and not get influenced by our faulty perceptions. A balanced approach would be to not put too many things in a single basket and gain flexibility and overall efficiency. After all life is more than just earning. We need to explore myriad aspects in the limited time in this life. 

Some Points for Contemplation:

1. Life is made up of numerous forces with resultant force of zero

2. First step towards self-improvement is to realize that all our perceptions are faulty.  As we find our defects  we improve.

3. One who knows how much he or she does not know knows more than what learned persons know.

4. Things do not happen the way we want. But we can perceive them the way we want.

5. Real freedom is when we get rid of all attachments including our desires, fears, possessiveness and ego.

6. Once something has happened we should always reckon it as good because our knowledgeable higher powers allowed it to happen.

7. Our problems are constraints in life because of which there is value for what we have.

8. Our own expectations do harm to us more than anyone can harm us.

9. Small improvements in our perceptions and thinking are the best sources of happiness.

10. I do not know most of things and any thing can happen are important facts usually not taken into consideration by our minds.

11. Our problems are actually small but are perceived bigger due to our ego.

12. If we are upset or angry at something it just means that we have not given enough importance to feeling good.

13. One of the important things to realize is that our thoughts are natural projections of the previous thought and may not be desirable.

14. One of the important endeavors is to keep prioritizing our thoughts as they come and reject those thoughts that may be undesirable.

15. To remain intelligent we need to keep fine tuning our minds with contemplation on right priorities as per our individual needs.

16. The single most cause of problems and suffering is that we take decisions without taking all perspectives into consideration in right priorities.

17. We have to live our life in the world as provided to us and not according to our expectations

18. If our life is a representation of the world we cannot expect it to be a bed of roses

19. If our families are representation of the world we cannot expect our relationships to be a bed of roses

20. We need to balance between having  good journeys or experiences and having good end results or destinations

21. If we like and appreciate our work we do not need any appreciations or recognitions

22. Our problems will appear to be lighter if we just stop taking ourselves too seriously

23. Our thoughts about the problems creates unhappy feelings and not the problems

24. If we reckon there is scope of improvements then only there is scope for improvements

25. We should consider all people in our lives as unique designs

26. There is justification for everything but we do not know that at our levels

27. Some things make us happy because we give importance to those things. Some things make us unhappy because we give importance to those things.