Shadow Dominates Perspective

Your shadow dominates your perspective. Perspective needs correction. The shadow is you yet not you. Everything that exists is already in your perspective.

An interesting quote... "He who has no shadow, is in utter darkness..." -- Manjushree Abhinav

Another interesting quote...

"The infinite vibratory levels, the dimensions of inter-connectedness are without end."

- Alex Grey


Further reading on the Shadow : Dakini Notes

This poem uses symbolic language and metaphors to evoke deep meaning:
1. "Your shadow dominates your perspective.": A person's fears, doubts, insecurities, or dark aspects of their personality (symbolized here as a "shadow") may be overwhelming their perspective. They may be seeing the world through a negative or pessimistic lens.
2. "Perspective needs correction.": The the person needs to shift their perspective, likely to move away from the shadow's dominance. It's a call to reassess one's viewpoint and perhaps adopt a more balanced, realistic, or positive outlook.
3. "The shadow is you yet not you.": The shadow represents aspects of the individual's self, possibly the aspects they deny or suppress. It's part of them but doesn't completely define them. This line encourages introspection and acceptance of one's darker aspects while also acknowledging the complexity of the self.
4. "Everything that exists is already in your perspective.": This could mean that our reality is shaped by our perception. All things, people, and experiences exist within the realm of our understanding, view, and interpretation. It also suggests the potential for change: if the perspective is altered, so too is the perceived reality.
Overall, this passage appears to delve into the theme of self-perception and introspection, suggesting that we hold power over our realities through our perspectives and attitudes. It encourages acknowledgement of all facets of our selves, including the darker ones, and emphasises the need for growth and change in our perspectives.

Octopus Paul's Gospel Status...

This string of FIFA world cup result 'predictions' by "Octopus Paul" is certainly going to encourage people's tendency to believe in frauds like fortune tellers, tarot readers, astrologers, palmists and misc psychic nuts.

Already this world is riddled with superstition and pseudo science.

It's not just the stereotypical housewife or the illiterate person who is superstitious....A HUGE number of educated businessmen too take their business decisions based NOT on analyses by financial professionals...but...based on astrological predictions! For example Business Astr.olo.gers, Ast.roSa.gar, Sensex Prediction. If people in the businessworld were not superstitious, why would such pseudo scientific businesses thrive?

These 'astro predictors' claim to be experts in mysticism and spirituality.

Pure mysticism can NEVER endorse astrology, palmistry, tarot, etc. Such pseduo science is not a part of real mysticism. Cannot be. Pure mysticism does not 'predict'.

Predicting Reality is not possible.


Coming back to Octopus Paul....

It's common sense that only the successful 'predictor' will gain public attention.

For the ONE Octopus Paul that succeeded, one can imagine how many others must have tried their luck and failed. It is just a coincidence that Octopus Paul got the correct sequence.

A HUGE number would have tried - because a sports event of such magnitude - involves a huge amount of betting.

One, of the thousands who tried, managed to nail the winners sequence. What is so magical about that?

Some info from Wiki: Paul_the_Octopus:

Paul's apparent success is comparable to a run of luck when tossing a coin.

This connection has been made by Professor Chris Budd of the University of Bath, Professor David Spiegelharter of Cambridge University, and Etienne Roquain of Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

The Statistics:

1. The probability of 12 or more successful predictions in 14 attempts is p = 0.0065 (~0.65%).

2. The probability of 8 successful predictions out of 8 attempts is p = 0.0039 (~0.39%).

3.Given that the first three matches could have ended in a draw, the chance of an 8/8 score is 1/864 (= 1/3³ X 1/2⁵) ~ 0.11%.

4. The probability of final four predictions being correct is 1/2⁴ = 0.0625 = 6.25%.



UPDATE:

Probability of 8 on 8 correct (when only two choices are there) is 1/2⁸ = 0.0039 or 0.39%. That's 39 on 10000.

Given that the first three matches could have ended in a draw, the chance of an 8/8 score is 1/864 (= 1/3³ X 1/2⁵) ~ 0.11% OR 11 in 10000.

These calculations are established probability theory.

You could say that out of every 10000 people who try to guess the correct sequence, about 11 will get it right.

Out of 10,000 octopuses who try to guess the winning teams (all 8 matches of 2010) --- there will be about 11 Octopus Pauls.

An event as huge as the FIFA world cup ---- tens of thousands of people will try to guess the correct sequence --- we dont hear about the failure. We hear only about the success.

Link: Probability of 8/8 correct.

Some comparisons:

1. The chance of a player receiving a triplet of aces in a game of cards is smaller than Octopus Paul's 8/8 guess (11 on 10,000). The chance of a triplet of aces is about 2 in 10,000. But it can happen.

Further Reading: DNA Blogs: Vivek Kaul

Beast Nature

I recently came across the following...

If you truly want to be happy, renounce the following: Anger, Pride, Competitiveness, Concern, Contempt, Doubt, Expectation, Envy, Fear, Guilt, Greed, Grief, Hostility, Impatience, Misery, Revenge, Shame & Suspicion. “Give up all bad qualities in you, banish the ego and develop the spirit of surrender. You will then experience Bliss.” --- Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

How meaningful are such messages? Are they useful guidance?

The fundamental question is.... "WHAT ARE WE?"

The answer is....
We are animals. Carnivores. Carnivores with claws. Teeth. Lust for blood. Pride. Anger. Lust for Chaos, Mayhem, Death. This is our TRUE NATURE.

The human is incomplete without such qualities.

You could call them carnivorous qualities.

Wanting to give up your carnivorous qualities because they can be used to harm others is like wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Common sense says enjoy your carnivorous qualities without harming others. It does not have to be more complex than that.

The human without carnivorous qualities in his personality is like a human without teeth and nails.


The complete person is like the mythological Shiva.

The mythological Shiva has a dual nature (nectar and poison).

He is light. He is also darkness.

We humans too have the same dual nature, nectar and poison. Light and darkness.

Our poisonous side is as fundamental as our nectarous side. So it makes no sense to try and banish or reject our poisonous, negative, flawed side. It is a part of us.

Maya, Advaita Vedanta with Remez Sasson

The five senses make us feel that the world is real. Seeing the solidity of the objects around us, feeling the impact of the senses, it is hard to deny the validity of what we see. Everything looks real and we never stop to question this reality.

The mind is attached to the five senses and accepts everything as real without questioning. When we bump into a table or a wall and we feel pain, it is difficult to say that we are imagining it. When we see with our eyes, hear sounds, smell, or when we feel heat or coldness, we accept these sense impressions as real.

Some say that the world is an illusion, Maya in Eastern terminology. Can we accept this when everything looks so real? Can we regard the world as imagination?

We need the five senses and the mind to be conscious of the world, which means that the world is dependent on them. Without the senses and the mind the world does not exist for us.

If we say that a real thing is something that always exist with no gaps, then the outside world is not real. There are times besides sleep, when we are so busy that we are not conscious of what is going on around us. When there are no sensory sensations, as while being in a floating tank, or when in deep meditation, we are still conscious, but not of the world. This means that sometimes we are conscious of the world and sometimes we are not.

After we wake up from sleep, or get out of deep meditation and return to ordinary consciousness, we feel that there was a gap in our consciousness of the outside world. [But the reality is...] there was no world at that time.

If we endeavor to pay attention to our consciousness we will come to the conclusion that the outside world comes and goes, while the awareness of our inner consciousness never wavers.

The world exists for us only when the senses and mind are directed towards it, and ceases to exist for us the moment we silence the senses and mind. During deep sleep we do not experience the world because the senses are not active. Can you prove the reality of the world while you are in deep sleep? When you wake up from sleep other people may tell you that the world existed, but can you prove that these people existed while you were asleep?

After waking up our mind may invent all kinds of theories to prove the reality of the world. Yet, these are only mental theories. During sleep the world was non-existent. The world disappeared together with time.

During sleep dreams seem very real, but upon awakening we realize that they were just dreams.

So it is with this world we call reality. It is possible to wake from it too.

Sri Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian sage, has said that the difference between a dream while sleeping and the dream we call wakefulness is only of duration, one short and the other one long.

Further to the above, each person interprets and relates to other people's behavior, words and attitudes in a different way, according to the contents of his subconscious mind. No one's world is like another. Again, we see illusion at work. A world is created, based on our interpretation of what we see hear and sense.


Mind and thoughts create the world

Thoughts arise in the mind and we become aware of them. The same kind of thoughts tend to arise again and again. If we let this process continue, it goes on incessantly. These thoughts make us expect, behave, talk and act in a certain personalized way, and thus cause the people we come in contact with, to treat us and relate to us in a certain manner.

We usually continue with the same way of thinking, and live the same kind of life each day, whether we like it or not. These thoughts shape our circumstances and relationships. It is like watching the same movie over and over again. If we want to watch a different movie we have to change the reel or cassette. This happens by changing our thoughts. This is how creative visualization works, and there is nothing supernatural about this.

The world we experience and the life we live, are the reflections of our thoughts. The mind creates a world of illusion. By changing our thoughts, we change the illusion and experience a different reality. We do not create a world, only an illusion that looks real. No unusual power is involved here. We are living in Maya and are changing the Maya.

When we are able to still the mind and the senses, our consciousness seems to shift into a new dimension. Actually the higher dimension is there all the time, only that the mind makes us think otherwise. When there are no thoughts in the mind, the world we know and believe is real, loses its reality. We become conscious of the world beyond the mind and illusions.

Waking up from illusion...
We can wake up completely, understand and become conscious of the illusion of Maya, and live, as we really are, as a pure, formless, beginning-less and endless consciousness. Due to illusion it seems as if we are all separated, having individual selves and each living a different life. Even when we wake up from Maya, its play may go on. We continue to see and experience it, yet it is of no concern to us anymore. Outwardly we may continue to live our life in the same manner, but we are really awake.

It is like a movie show. A person watching a movie gets so involved with the characters and with what happens on the screen. He may become happy or sad with the heroes, get depressed, shout or laugh.

If at a particular moment he decides to stop watching the screen and manages to withdraw his attention from the movie, he gets snapped out of the illusion the movie creates. The projecting machine will go on projecting images on the screen, but he knows that it is only light projected through the film onto the screen. What is seen on the screen is not real, but yet it is there. He may watch the movie, or he may decide to close his eyes and ears and stop looking at the screen.

Have you ever watched a movie, when at some point the reel got stuck or there was a power failure? What happens to you when you watch an interesting, absorbing film on the television and then suddenly there are commercials? You are snapped out of the illusion to the world around you. When you are sleeping and dreaming, and someone wakes you up, you feel thrown out of one world to a different one. It is the same in the life we call reality. It is possible to wake up from it.

One who has managed to still his mind and senses through proper training, may go on living and acting in the world like the person in the cinema hall, who is no longer interested in the movie. He learns how to get out of the illusion and wake up. If he is no more a slave to illusion and dreams, he is free. He sees everything as it really is. Contrary to what you might think, such a person functions in his daily life in a better way, is stronger, happier, very practical and free from worry.

In the East, metaphors are used in order to demonstrate what illusion is in relation to Reality. A jewel made of gold may be called an earring or a necklace, but actually it is only gold. Before it became a jewel and after it is melted it is only gold. Clay is shaped into vessels such as plates, cups, or vases, but they are only clay.

Due to convenience of speech we call these objects made of gold or clay by many names, but they are really only clay or gold. Everything in existence is "made" from the Original Substance, and is not a "real" thing standing by itself, exactly as in the above examples. Nothing has a reality of its own.

A mirage is not real, but yet we see it. A dream taking place while sleeping is not real, yet we experience it during the time of the dream as a reality. A hologram looks 3D, while it is actually flat.

In the East, one of the metaphors of explaining reality and illusion is that of the rope and the snake. In the dark we may see a rope and mistake it for a snake. When there is enough light we realize that it was only a rope, and the snake disappears.

It is only due to some kind of illusion that we see a world. Everything is in the mind.