How To Tackle The Green - Eyed Monster _ MANI SHANKAR

I am all J over the way my ex-GF is making out with another guy and burning up with rage for weeks.  Can't think of anything else.  Help._ A teenager.

 ***

I am going to make a scalpel out of my pen and harsh as it may seem, do a surgical incision.  J kills.  Yup.  But you know that already and you seem to want exactly that - to be drowned in such stupor that you begin to die slowly inside.  You get so obsessed that you secretly want all vestiges of compassion and camaraderie to get snuffed out of existence.  As emotions go jealously is among the more jealous of emotions.  It leaves no room for any other mood to exist.  Sure it satisfies you in certain obscure ways, just as a cigarette satisfies the smoker - in some obscure way.

***

Ask a smoker exactly what pleasure he derives and he will be at a loss to explain - same with jealousy.  You can't explain why at every moment your mind drifts towards morbid fantasies but you sure do get a grim satisfaction from the addiction.  Make no mistake, once it takes it grip like a python coiling around a rat - it suffocates the life breath of goodness and smothers you to a horrible heart-death.  You become a shell of a person with no warmth, no humour, no happiness left.  Are you sure you want to get cured?  Had enough?

***

Then stop feeling so self-important, stop feeling you are the centre of the universe around whom everyone should revolve.  Change the fulcrum of your existence.  Rise into a protecting nurturing wisdom.  Grant people the right to love others, to make love to others.  Grant people the right to see through you, to get fed up with you, to walk out on you.  Truly nobody is your own in this world.  Wow.  That was very harsh, yes, and I need to say it again with a smile.  Nobody is your own in this world.  Just because society said the two of you are a couple doesn't take away from the other the right to think otherwise.  Your real option is to free the other and set yourself free in the process.

***

You have arrived at a crossroad and two paths lie before you.  The first is the smooth well traveled highway of jealous burning.  If you don't take the harder road of forgiveness now, someday when the juices run dry and you shrivel up inside into a brittle twig of your former self, the truth will hit you in the face.  You will understand that it was far better to have become humble, accepted your insignificance and walker away a free person than to have burnt into black toast with the raging fires of envy.

***

The smart guy knows when to fume and rage and when to shrug and walk away.  The intelligent guy knows when to let pride flow into him and when to let pride flow away from him.  This soft skill of handling jealously is critical and life saving, friend.  Learn it well and live to love another day.

************

"MANISHANKAR, THE AUTHOR, A DIRECTOR, HELPS THE YOUTH STRIKE A BALANCE IN THEIR RELATION SHIPS................"

Impatience Of The Future Makes You Miss Present... Queenie-tessential

We jumped into the cab to catch the movie Total Recall.  We were headed for a crowded area called Bugis Junction in Singapore.  "Hurry up, please," my friends told the cab driver, "or we will miss our movie."  The cab driver glanced back at us dismisively and then shook his head.  "I can't go any faster than this.  Can't you see the clazy (crazy) tlaffic (traffic)?"  he said pronouncing his r's as l's and vice versa.  "I could go zooming through if I had a Fellali," he continued.  "In a Fellali I could get you there soon, could even get you to heaven."  He added laughing loudly and nodding at the same time.  "All luch people in a hully to go up, that's why they buy a Fellali" he let out that laugh again.  "Okay, okay," said my friend who was with me getting impatient with his monologue and said that we may not make to the movie, "You drive as you like but we need to go soon and maybe if you focus on the road, we will get there."

***

He looked back at us again visibly amused.  "Only a hericopter can take you through the tlaffic," he nodded "That is the way of the lich.  They are not satisfied, you see.  Even the Fellali becomes slow for them, and then they buy a helicopter.  Soon hericopter becomes slow.  Then they must have a plane.  Money buys everything.  Money buys love," he laughed.

***

It was obvious the man was in pain and had suffered "No money, no honey.  Love cannot buy money, but money can buy love," he forced his laugh this time.  "No money, No love."

***

By now, we had decided not to go for the movie and instructed the driver to take a U-turn and drop us back to where he had picked us up.  I relaxed back on my seat, now no more in a rush and started talking to him.  "What about your love?"  I asked him.  "My wife was my love," he paused for a bit as if suddenly lost.  "I worked hard all day and gave her everything I had.  I bought her a house.  She wanted more.  I gave her more.  But she wanted more and more.  She forgot about me.  She wanted to be lich, and could not understand why she was not lich.  She wanted to leach the sky.  No money no honey," he said, and for the first time his tone became sad.  "But now" he almost shouted "Ican buy a lot of butterfries with money.  I can buy love."  It took me a few moments to understand the term 'butterfries'.  For a moment I argued, "That is not love."  He laughed "What is it lady, what is love?"

***

No doubt, our taxi driver was a bit "touched" in the head, although our conversation was a bit crazy, there was food for thought in what he said.  Suddenly, as if brought back to the present moment about time and traffic, he said, "Nothing is the same any more about people.  See how impatient your friends are.  Train them to be calm.  Do yoga," he laughed "I drive people everyday.  They are stressed about time and traffic.  These things are not in their or my control."  I nodded agreeing.  "Look how much time you and your friends wasted telling me to hurry.  So busy looking ahead that you lost the present."  I could go on talking to him.  We reached our destination.

***

We paid him and I knew I would never see him again.  It was a most interesting journey.  Even though we never reached where we were originally headed.

***

"I am happy now.  I changed my way of life and allowed people who were not happy with me to leave and go to what made them happier.  And now," he laughed again, "there are many butterfries to give me love," looking pleased with his ability to have found peace and clarity - so what if it was through coloured lenses?..............

Discard Mental Baggage _ Mani Shankar

You want to harness the power of your mind to alter your reality, yes?  That's really an invitation to chaos.  Lots of people are in the market, offering quick and easy solutions.  You flow into them with anticipation and excitement.  You follow their prescribed formulae, their chants and utterances, wear their beads, read their books, watch their DVDs, dress as per their code, hang on to their every word, hoping, pleading, fantasizing.  It's a pointless journey, just leading you deeper into delusion.  Years later you find yourself at the same spot where you started - clueless, a bit confused, with a sneaky suspicion that nothing really happened outside your imagination.  Your reality was never altered, you are still the same guy, and the world around you is just as it was.

***

This is the undiluted truth.  There is no quick-fix solutions to altering your reality, no magic mantras you can utter.  Know the frog doesn't turn into a prince with a kiss.  Know the world doesn't change with the wave of a wand.  Know clothes can't make you richer, wiser or luckier than you would otherwise be.  The sooner you start accepting this bittersweet truth, the better off you will be.

***

I said bittersweet because there are two opposing layers inside this revelation.  The first is disappointing when you finally understand that there are no quick-fix solutions.  The second is elevating - when you finally understand that nobody outside you has the power to change your world, and so it's time to get acquainted with that stranger within - your mind.

***

The quality of mind is that it operates at several levels simultaneously.  All you have been able to access so far is the most superficial surface.  This is the world of thoughts, words, hopes, wishes, daydreams and dreams.  Remember, everything you read, hear and see translates itself into mental constructs, as thoughts.  What is a thought?  It's a mental projection of some input you have grasped.  Thoughts are the extension of your senses, they are the first line of defence you have when dealing with the world.

***

Having thoughts are very important.  But there is such a thing called excess of thought.  This happens when, like jungles, they take over our minds, growing wildly, completely beyond our control.  Now the mind starts losing its ability to conjure a thought, consider it and then make it fade it away.  Thoughts start roaming through the mind like bandits, creating havoc at will.  The mind surrenders, eventually becomes a slave of its own thoughts.  Add to this the chaos of the Age of marketing Madness we live in - where everyday you are exposed to a thousand needless desires, baseless fears and mental conditioning.  It's enough to make a sane guy crazy.  But you have already made yourself crazy, and the result is that your fears and hopes create thoughts that recur in endless loops, making you salivate, palpitate, ruminate, agitate and decimate your potential to even address your reality.  Your ability to alter that reality through the mind is now a far dream.   

 ***

The time has come to take you beyond thought, into deeper, purer levels inside yourself.  The time has come to leave this chaos behind and rise into higher levels of being within.  You can't do it by attaching yourself to more books and chants and shibboleths.  You can only do it by gently leaving it all behind - by dropping the mental baggage, until the sheer lightness of being makes you float away.....

Does Black Magic Exist?... RAM GOPAL VARMA

THE ACE FILM DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER DIGS INTO ALL THINGS GOOD, BAD AND UGLY IN REAL LIFE AND REEL LIFE......

***

I am sure fear stems from the threat of emotional or physical violence.  This fear is heightened, especially if it comes from an unknown or unfathomable source.

***

If you are aware of the motivations of the threatening force, you won't be half as scared.  For example, you will be chilled to the bone on being confronted by a snake but if your can recognise the species and know how its poison can affect your system, instead of being scared you will think of ways of escaping it or killing it.

***

Belief in God primarily comes out of fear.  We don't trust our family, friends, the police or the government to protect us.  Hence, we desperately believe in a force which will protect us.  Hence, we desperately believe in a force which will protect us in every which way.  In order to feel the power of God, we invent and pitch his power against a counterpoint.  Thus, evil forces like demons, the devil and black magic are created.

***

Black magic is supposedly used to hurt or kill an enemy by either practicing it or hiring its practitioners.  Whether it exists or not, nobody can tell, but I am stunned by the sheer number of people who believe in it despite their education and intelligence.  When they cannot understand the reasons behind negative events, they start believing in black magic.

***

I know of a certain actor who was seeing a girl whom his parents disapproved of intensely.  Unable to break their relationship and refusing to see the negative traits of their own son, the parents were convinced that the girl practised black magic.  They were even terrified of seeing her pictures in the magazines and newspapers.

***

In the West, there is much talk about making someone you hate suffer by pricking needles and pins into a voodoo doll.  In India, the most common cure happens to be a witch doctor or exorcist.

***

Now this exorcist can be different depending on the person he has to cure.  There are godmen, minor and major, who will offer panaceas, paper chits and amulets and soon assume cult status.

***

In the case of rural areas and the underprivileged sections even in cities, these exorcists come with bodies covered in ash, their long hair braided and coloured.  They carry small brooms, little drums and perform high-pitched prayers before the affected person.  This practice has been around for centuries but I do wonder about the success ratio of these self-styled exorcists.

***

Frankly, I am shaken by fear also.  On returning home after a long trip, I wonder if there is an invisible, malevolent presence in my house.  On a highway when I see a truck being driven towards my car at a crazy speed, I fear that the devil may be in it, and will wipe me out from the face of the earth.

***

Mercifully, such paranoid thoughts only last for a split second.  Because I know the cure.  I just tell myself, "Why should you be afraid?  You're quite a devil yourself."

***

Try it, it works...... RAM GOPAL VARMA....