Chicklet - Add to Google Homepage

Add to Google Reader or Homepage

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Marriage, Rope walking and Vertical growth…..

 

In ancient India a king sought to resolve a dispute between two of his ministers who wanted to marry the same woman. No wonder our bollywood movies still revolves around the same theme for long.

The easier way to settle this would have been to ask the lady we to who do you want to marry. Either one of them, both or none?

But since the matter was taken to the king, he told both of them to walk on a rope and whoever did so successfully, would win the hand of the woman. One minister spent a sleepless night worrying how he would be able to walk the tightrope. The other minister was very relaxed — he felt there was no point in getting agitated.

The minister who kept his cool emerged the winner, walking effortlessly on the rope. Asked to share his secret, he only said, ''I do not know''. To walk on the rope without losing one's balance involves being relaxed, always trying to balance, being in the present and more importantly willing to risk the act knowing the consequences. The same qualities are vital for the success of a marriage, too.

Many of those who are successfully married don’t realize that they have been growing vertically. But before i define what is vertical growth let me take a small detour ask this?

Why do sad people attract sad incidences in life? Why do happy people attract happy situations in life? (You may be interested to read this 2 part blog before you continue, http://ragsgopalan.blogspot.com/2010/09/floating-in-field-of-thought-forms.html )

Depending on what state of being we are, we attract situations. “Likes attract” is fast becoming one of my favorite quotes. So to change situations in our life we have to focus on heightening our state of being. 

Mullah Nazaruddin, while walking in the desert, saw a group of people riding horses. He thought they were robbers and started running. They turned out to be travelers. Seeing the Mullah running, the travelers thought he was in trouble — so they started going towards him.

Now the Mullah was convinced they were after him and he ran into a graveyard — the travelers followed him there. The tired Mullah lay down on one of the coffins. Then he realized they were not robbers but travelers. They asked him: "Why are you here?'' ''I am here because of you and you are here because of me'' answered the Mullah.

This is an aspect of Law of karma. In other words, we attract situations in life.

We often find ourselves in such situations aligned to our state of being. If our consciousness is not committed to transformation, then we will not grow wiser from situations, but complain and grumble, expecting the situation to be different.

The situation goes on repeating itself until we learn and grow. So how can we change our state of being?

"To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant."

So to remove the ignorance we need to gather different perspectives and analyze them. In the world of materialistic superstition and growth addicted life style, its important to understand two types of growth: horizontal and vertical growth. Horizontal growth means more money, name, fame. Our minds are mostly confined to this dimension only.

The second type of growth is vertical growth. The yardstick for this is: Five years back how calm was I, and how calm am I now? The growth is measured in its depth and not in its width. The more one grows in love, kindness and compassion, the more one is truly growing. Such a growth is fulfilling. Growth happening in the vertical dimension changes one's state of being.

In order to grow vertically, one has to cultivate an easy breath, (which means body has to be supple and flexible), develop a cultivated sense of insensitivity to most of the day today problems (aka. எருமை மாடு மேல மழை பெய்யராபோல்) be balanced, and stay aware in the present. Life is fulfilling only with such a type of growth.

While vertical growth is purely a function of individual composition, marriage certainly acts a catalyst. Both successful in rope walking aka. married life (mostly) and poor / failed marriages (sometimes) helps one grow vertically which alters one’s state of being for the better. It does not matter which path we take as long as we are aware and move towards holistic internal growth…. 

 

Yours Rope walkingly,

Happy reading!

No comments:

Post a Comment