Happy Diwali

‘Let me clean up’, This is what I told to myself when I found myself alone at home on a long Diwali weekend. During Diwali thought of cleaning up comes to mind first because as per religious beliefs of some parts of India, goddess of wealth and prosperity Lakshmi comes home during Diwali time. She is also representation of light. This means thousands years ago when the celebration of Diwali came to mind they knew that prosperity and wealth is associated with light and cleanliness. Considering the deep philosophical understanding of Indian sages I am sure they did not mean just the exterior cleanliness and light.

In current world what does cleanliness mean? Not just house, clothes and exteriors but also emails, task list and hard drives. So I quickly cleaned house, put the clothes in washing machine, cleaned the dishes left from last nights dinner and the started my computer.

iCloud: I created this account when I was having an apple phone but never actively used it so cleaning up was easy. Just selected all and deleted.
Hotmail: Not sure when and how I created this account because I moved from Yahoo to gmail long back and cant find reference of hotmail in my memory hence it was easy to clean up. Select all and delete.

Gmail: It was an ocean of emails. I did not want to select all and delete because that’s my actively used personal email address. There are high chances of deleting important emails when I might not have read or flagged as important.

So I started reading or at least giving a quick glance at each email before deleting.

Every email seemed so informative, helpful and if I go through them thoroughly I can gain great knowledge which will definitely help me in professional and personal life. I kept reading and deleting when satisfied with it’s use. 3 days passed by I still see 4000 odd emails lying there unread. I hoped that after 3 days of reading so many great articles I must feel myself happy, liberated and enlightened but it was not. I am feeling confused, tired and frustrated.

I took a step back to understand the reason of this contradicting reaction. Upon thinking I got the answer as information-overfeed.

When I need some information, I will seek for that through various sources. When I seek for knowledge I create a vacuum in my mind or empty space in my mind which I wish to fulfill by the knowledge I am seeking. When I find the information, I study it well to understand hence I give respect to the knowledge gained. This knowledge is preserved in my mind forever.

But this overfeeding of knowledge via emails despite my sincere attempts did not help me gain any knowledge.

The best way to understand when you are doing something which you are not enjoying is when you find yourself tired at the end. Our body and mind have enormous capacity so there is nothing called as limit. But the primary factor behind feeling tired or energetic is how attached or interested you are with the subject or action.

Coming back to emails I saw there are different newsletters, blogs from different sites are the ones which are overfeeding my poor brain. The information provided are useful but I do not need them right now. But may need for sustaining. Sustaining life at the state it is right now is a big task. It is a huge task if I want to see myself living the same life with equal amount of health, wealth, spirit and friends. It is a huge task because everything will wither with time so I have to keep on feeding it the right amount of substance so that it retains. Which means I have to prepare myself for tomorrow so that I can survive the same life tomorrow. Hence I may need to feed myself with the information that I may need tomorrow. Which means I have to overfeed myself which I was doing just few hours back.

Hmm.. Something just went wrong somewhere otherwise I would not have reached the same spot I wanted to come out of.

Sustaining?? Really! Do I have any control over tomorrow. I have seen incidences in recent past where life took turns and overturns in seconds for which I was a mere spectator. So with so much of efforts if i am going to end up being a mere spectator of life then why waste time. What is important is today. Now.

Great!! Selected all email, and deleted them as if I never received them.

Woo Hoo!!! Clean mailbox and clean mind.

Hey what about tasks that are pending. But where are they? All in mind? ahh. Thats a big clutter.

Created a task list started writing down everything that I wished to accomplish today, tomorrow and sometime later. It started with a blank list for few hours then it all started pouring in. As if a big rock was holding the flow inside my brain. May be that rock is named as ‘Later’. After few hours I found myself a good list of tasks to be completed.

Life is full of excitements and great joy.I see myself happy, feel myself free and developed greater awareness about what I want. I see life much brighter, mind much cleaner and happiness all around.

Hmm.. Brighter!! Clean!!! Happiness!! May be goddess Lakshmi came in.. isn’t it what I expected when I started cleaning.

Wow!! Great! Thanks to those who made it till this point. Happy Diwali.

Namaste!!!