The GOTO of Meditation

I try to meditate on a regular basis. There was a time when I meditated for an hour every day, but now a days if I get 15 mins I am very thankful for it. Anyhow, what I realized recently is an analogy to programming headache. A GOTO statement in computer language is an instruction to the compiler/processor to jump to a particular line of code. It was invented long time back (I am guessing in FORTRAN) to make the computation easy. As it’s easier to jump the control anywhere you want to. But, this turned out to be a nightmare at later stages of programming where some applications may have millions of lines of code. There rose a criticism of the GOTO statement and you can read about it online.

There are many kinds of meditations available. Especially with the globalization, all kinds of meditation practices has been transported to America’s latest YMCAs (checkout Kalidasa @ Berkeley YMCA). But the whole premise or principle of meditation stays very simple. It’s like whoever/whatever created us wanted to have some fun, so he/she/it installed a ‘mind’ between our ears and hence begun the struggle over the control of thoughts. Our thoughts are streamed at much higher rate than any twitter system imagined. They are always chained. One thought leads to another and to another. By the time you become aware (if at all you can become aware) you are far away from where you started.

lake yoga

So, the principle behind any meditation technique is to not to follow this crazy route taken by our thoughts. They ask you to close your eyes, to reduce one more sesory system mis-leading you into distraction. Almost all kinds of meditations involve following something and doing it repeteadly. It could be your breath, a lamp or the train of thoughts itself. Like the weight loss programs, a meditation methodology is unique to each person. You need to try a bunch of them before you stick to one. The one I use is to follow my breath. I watch myself inhaling and exhaling, it’s not easy but slowly I get into a flow and then I am able to feel whatever people usually feel when they meditate.

But the mind is so cunning or distracted that I keep forgetting that I need to keep my focus on my breath and lose myself in the stream of thoughts. But then when I remember, I gently come back to watching my breathing. This reminded me nothing but GOTO statement of meditation. It’s like when I am lost in my stream of thoughts I remind myself and issue a GOTO to go back to watching my breath. So, please be my guest and go ahead and use GOTO exhaustively in meditation. It’s not considered harmful in meditation. 🙂

Ignorance and Fear

As I was driving back home, I got a moment to ponder on ignorance and fear. I was thinking about one of the idea I have been toying around with, in the past 1 year. I am not sure what is stopping me from going ahead and flushing out the details and get that idea out, but I cannot make myself do anything about it so far. I have happened to discuss with my friends about the idea and they all think it’s a great idea and I personally believe that it’s a great one too. As I thought about it, two things crystallized for me.

Ignorance and Fear. I think both Ignorance and Fear are cyclically connected. Like a catch-22 situation. I think ignorance leads to fear and more fear leads to more ignorance. It’s a hard cycle to break. Most of it is happening without my serious thinking of it. Only today in the context of my idea was I able to see how they are connected.

My ignorance about certain things – Flex, iPhone development, Erlang, Amazon Web Services etc has made me not even attempt to take my first step towards this idea. I am a perfectionist and it’s a pain in the butt for any perfectionist to take a tiny imperfect step. Add to that years and years of self-flagellation you get a very acute case of self-doubter and highly self-crtitical judger. I realized as I sat through the slow moving traffic that my ignorance about certain “supposed” things has created a fear in me. The fear which freezes me in my location. Sangita, long time back, mentioned from her Somatics class that there are 5 ways we react to trauma/fear.

  1. fight
  2. flight
  3. freeze
  4. appease
  5. dis-associate

I think I have done almost all of them on that list in my life, but the most popular one seems to be ‘freeze’. So, ignorance creates fear which freezes me there by contributing to the ignorance.

I realized that there are couple of things I can do to break this cycle. Believe it or not, it’s another cycle albeit an empowering one. I think before I craft this cycle I need to make one strong assumption. And that is – “It’s a friendly Universe out there”. Einstein said it long time back. Anyhow, here is what I think would break the cycle.

Little action is a great replacement for Ignorance. Instead of thinking/believing that “Knowledge” is the response to Ignorance, I think the better response to ignorance is ‘small action steps’. I think, all my life the way I have learned is by making mistakes. Only that I have never been aware of it. My first job was where I had to prove by building a web application in 15 days in a totally new technology. Start to end. I had no clue how I am going to do it, but all I knew was I am going to do it and I did it. As I moved along, the pieces fell in their places. This is nothing new I am mentioning but it’s an age old way of learning things through tinkering, trial and error.

But I guess what happened over the past few years is that I happen to fall into the trap of disdaining trial and error and prefer erudition. Which is not bad, but for who I am it’s not the right way. By making myself believe that learning/knowing everything before I proceed, has put me in a situation where I am freezing without moving on with my idea. So, now I have realized that ‘small action steps’ are far better supplement for Ignorance than heavy dosages of knowledge.

The second part of the cycle is forgiveness, patience, end result and big picture. This happens to be the antidote for the ‘fear’ part of the earlier deadly cycle. Obviously, through trial and error, through ‘ready-fire-aim’ method I am going to burn myself many places. But, if I keep the end result and the big picture in mind then I won’t allow the fear of failure to freeze me. To make this happen I also have to be more forgiving of myself and my mistakes. I know Freud taught us to blame it on our parents as to why we grow up to be like this. Parents commit their own mistakes with parenting as with any other things, but I think once you have that awareness of how our childhood can affect our adulthood – we should be bigger enough to be able to take a plunge and become what we aspire to be. Anyhow, I am blabbering. But to make the story short, I believe remembering the big picture and being gentle with myself will help me to get rid of the fear.

Once this cycle is in place, the change won’t be overnight. But it sure will come. As I type this, I can sense a great calm in my heart which is a good sign. I am going to take my first tiny little step as soon as I end this post.

My Interests

Today, I was thinking about my interests and I realized that the core of it is ‘Consciousness’. And the theory & interpretation around it is mainly through 3 schools of thought.

  1. Neuro Science – I love how our brains work and how age old responses kick in. How creativity works etc
  2. Philosophy – The WHY question. Why am I here?
  3. Psychology – Human behavior as a mirror of my very own internal behaviors.

I am pretty sure I am going to expand on top of this and add in a lot many more things in future. But this is the gist of my interests and the kind of literature I read.

consciousness

They weren’t there then

My friend who works at the U.N. sent me this. It’s hilarious and truthful:

———————————————-

An ingenious example of speech and politics occurred recently in the United Nations Assembly that made the world community smile.

A representative from India began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named. When he struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath.’ He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water. When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.’

The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and shouted, ‘What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.’

The Indian representative smiled and said, ‘And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech. ‘And they say Kashmir belongs to them……………………………………….

Vibrational Beings

I have varied interests and I read a lot of literature on the stuff I like. I like, other than computer science, Physics, Quantum Physics, Mathematics, Spirituality, Philosophy, Human behaviour, Human Psychology, Scientific History, Data Mining, Visualization etc. At any given time I am reading a bunch of books that mould my mind in various directions. At this time I am obsessed with an idea of  how we are all ‘Vibrational Beings’.

This sounds new-age-ey, so please bear with me. I believe that we are all vibrational beings. Like layers of onions, we are engulfed within various beings, of which the most apparent one is Physical. Everything in this Universe has a vibration to it. If you dig deep into matter, it’s nothing but a bunch of quantum stuff loosely coupled and vibrating at a very high speed. If you look around you, you will see visible, living world. A world which could be perceived with our 5 senses. Based upon which we build our beliefs, thoughts and mental models. I believe that we have 4 layers in our beings.

  1. Vibrational
  2. Feeling
  3. Mental
  4. Physical

As always, I think visually and I am very comfortable explaining things visually. Here is how I believe it’s structured.

4 Layers of Being

There are 2 aspects to it. First, Internal – meaning the things that happen within the person. External meaning – things that happen outside of the person/being. Here is how I think it’s laid out.

1. Physical Being – This is the default visible being you see around. This is the action seeking person we interact with. The outcome of this being in the external world is – actions, activities, decisions etc

2. Mental Being – This is the being that gets attacked a lot. Because this is the being that creates the separation. This is the level at which the so called ‘EGO’ lives. This level, we have an image of ourselves as well as others. We have mental model of the world and all our beliefs are stored at this level. Access to memory at this level is very high. If you draw parallels to computer, this being has access to memory on a magnetic Hard disk. Everything gets stored, but you will have to search to retrieve it. This being is also responsible for the rich imagination and visualization. The outcome of this being in the external world is – Thoughts, ideas etc.

3. Feelings Being – This is the being who feels things. Anger, frustration, love, lust, mercy, good feelings, bad feelings are all created and live here. This being also has access to memory, but if you think in terms of computers again – the kind of access this being has to memory is like ‘Solid State Hard Disk’. Meaning, it’s smaller but very powerful and doesn’t take much time to retrieve it. You will always be able to recall the feelings you had when you had your fist kiss. You don’t need to think about it. The outcome of this being in the external world is – Emotions.

4. Vibrational Being – This is the core of all. This being is what we actually are. At this level, nothing is different from the individual being. Everything and everyone is same when it comes to vibrational beings. This is the being that gets referred to as soul, atma, consciousness, Godness etc. This is who we all are. Unfortunately, there is no external representation of this being in the external world. How can it be? If everything is one, there is no external world at all. And that’s what causes a lot of confusion in our lives. This being is often mistaken as ‘Feelings being’ as that’s the closest to it, but they both are not one and the same.

All the practices we do in the name of religion, God, Spirituality are all pathways to realize or touch this vibrational being within us. Good deeds, Good thoughts, Meditation, Love etc are all a pathway to get access to this Vibrational being.

Well that’s theory, now how can you use this knowledge? If you look closely – Feelings are closest to this vibrational being and there is no other simple way to get access to it. Say, for example – you are looking for a new job. You would prepare your resume – that’s physical. You would prepare for the interview questions that’s mental. Various new age gurus suggest you to visualize the outcome, or feel the feelings. That’s true and correct. In addition to both physical & mental action – you need to be there feelings wise too. That’s how you land that job.

Feelings are the only way you can have access to the Vibrational being. Once you change the vibration of that being through a mix of Emotions, Thoughts & Actions – you will sync with whatever you are looking for in vibration. This sounds easy, but hard to do because – everything in our world happens at Physical & Mental level. So, many distractions and so much work to do. A part of it is also our beliefs which we hold them as true. We associate ourselves with the egoistic self-image we create of ourselves. It took us our lifetime to get here, and it will take some more time to get where we actually want to be. But, having a map of things always helps. This is my map which I use to look at things when I am in doubt. This is what bring me clarity to some extent.

Non-Technical Managers

I started working on computers in the year 1992. It’s been almost 17 years I have been working on software. As I left school to get a serious career in Software programming, I saw a clear cut pattern about people and software.

You see in this world there are 2 kinds of people –

  1. People who know Software
  2. People who don’t know anything about Software

people

But, I have realized that there is a third kind and the most dangerous one.

3. People WHO THINK they know Software

people2

And believe me there are a lot of people who are out there who fall into 3rd category. With technology advancing so fast, people who wield a iPhone or a Blackberry think they know enough about software. It’s because the software “using” has become so dumb and easy.

For example, take ‘iTunes’ – it’s the best interface ever to interact with music files. Period. It also comes with a Apple store plus a kitchen sink! People love it. People like one windowed interface to all their music. If you read that carefully – I said, ‘using’ software has become so easy. But the problem is ‘building’ software hasn’t improved as much as the ‘using’ part.

itunes
iTunes, the mother of all future software design

Now, coming to the point. Imagine if you belong to Group 1 (People who know Software) – you work hard to build software and you know it and you are confident about yourself. Then as your career progresses you become a ‘Technical Manager’. You talk to developers and you give out ideas, you schedule project plans, communications. You know which tools to use and you have got it under control. Awesome. Congratulations and my kudos to you.

Imagine if you belong to Group 2 (People who don’t know anything about Software) – you work hard, you buy a Mac, you have friends who work in software but you never talk to them about their tools. You talk about the outcome of the software process, a product or a service. You use, of course, iTunes. You buy legitimate software and you are happy with your Apple updates. No problem. In the alternate universe – you buy PC, go for Vista and cussing Microsoft & HP printers but you still end up loving how easy iTunes works and how fast Safari 4 is.

Now, Imagine if you belong to Group 3 (People WHO THINK they know Software) – You work hard, but you don’t know that you don’t know. You have software friends, but you yap away some jargon. You use iTunes and think every software in this world SHOULD look like iTunes (Kamal, I can hear you giggle). You think software is cheap and easy and so are people who work on it. You zoom through your life without any clue about software but still maintain your egoistic authority on it.

The major pain in the butt situation is when these Group 3 people become Managers – by some chance or luck or sheer Oldage or money (mergers). These people think they know how software works and how their developers think. They have no idea about software project management and no clue about versions, timed release of software and best practices of software. What happens is the slow decay or rotting of the company. I have been in so many situations in my career all-together that I saw so many of these so called “Non-Technical” managers killing off the product, service and eventually the company. But, the real problem is they don’t know that they are the problem. They move onto new companies, new acquisitions and killing many other future companies.

How do you identify these people?

Look out for these warning signs.

  1. When they say they want a new tool to create a website with 1 click.
  2. When they ask you access to FTP because they think the data is on FTP server
  3. When they want everything to look like some software they have used in the past (Hint: iTunes)
  4. When they refuse to give you access to server but still want you to build a website on it
  5. When they ask you to store passwords & Credit card numbers in plain text because they want to see them in daily reports.
  6. When they want everything to be exported to an Excel sheet
  7. Their favorite quote – ‘I wanted this feature yesterday’.
  8. When they want ’rounded corners’ on everything.
  9. They think Web 2.0 is a boxed product.
  10. When they treat ‘Testing’ as a ‘Delay’

Let me know if you come across anything I miss. I am sure there are many more.

How do you fix this?

This is tough, but with some patience and some systems these could be fixed.  Here they are:

  1. You basically have to educate this person who thinks he/she knows software. The education they skipped in the past needs to be put in their brains.
  2. You create a system. You tell them – this is where you keep an eye and I will update the status when it’s done. Use some online project management tool.

If these 2 fail, you become an expert in one of the software niche and become a freelancer that way you never have to work under a ‘Non-Technical’ Manager. You finish a project and you move on. You never have to educate anyone and you will be happy with your work. You would giggle inside when the ‘Non-Technical’ manager references iTunes in a meeting, but at least you don’t have to see him after the project is done.

Igniting the Flame of Self-Awareness

I am a big fan of J.Krishnamurti. I got this in my email today and I think it can’t be any simpler than this. We spend hours watching Tv, movies etc, I think it’s totally possible in this world to follow a simple method just like this and become self-aware. I love JK.

“If you find it difficult to be aware, then experiment with writing down every thought and feeling that arises throughout the day; write down your reactions of jealousy, envy, vanity, sensuality, the intentions behind your words, and so on.

Spend some time before breakfast in writing them down – which may necessitate going to bed earlier and putting aside some social affair. If you write these things down whenever you can, and in the evening before sleeping look over all that you have written during the day, study and examine it without judgment, without condemnation, you will begin to discover the hidden causes of your thoughts and feelings, desires and words….

Now, the important thing in this is to study with free intelligence what you have written down, and in studying it you will become aware of your own state. In the flame of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, the causes of conflict are discovered and consumed. You should continue to write down your thoughts and feelings, intentions and reactions, not once or twice, but for a considerable number of days until you are able to be aware of them instantly….

Meditation is not only constant self-awareness, but constant abandonment of the self. Out of right thinking there is meditation, from which there comes the tranquility of wisdom; and in that serenity the highest is realized.

Writing down what one thinks and feels, one’s desires and reactions, brings about an inward awareness, the cooperation of the unconscious with the conscious, and this in turn leads to integration and understanding.”

The Book of Life – December 25