A Sweet Love Note About Life! | Neha's Notebook

Upon capturing a billion years of crazy experience in my notebooks, I am writing this sweet love note to you. I have not written it before because I have been wondering if you would even read it. It’d be useless to me if you wouldn’t ever read this note. I am writing this only and only for you after all. But at last I gathered enough insanity to express my heart out, and in case you too feel the same in your heart, you’ll surely like reading my thoughts. So let me begin by telling you how I have been feeling lately. Lately, I have been feeling that I am living in a video game, as if I am a character in some video game. I am constantly chasing some goal or milestone. But sometimes I also allow myself to relax, destress and just enjoy my life. For instance, by having a cup of hot coffee, by eating a chocolate, by taking a long walk in the park, by dancing and listening to music, by doing some fun activity that I used to do when I was not this old and grown up, activities like coloring, art journal, doodling and writing poetry.

During the evenings, while I am relishing the roaring orange-crimson sunset, I often feel like I am in love. As if I want to tell somebody I love the most that I like it when I catch them looking at me. And whoever, whatever I am, in this moment, I am completely theirs to own. I am saying this because I think that someone is not a true lover unless they are a lover forever and all the time. And therefore, I aspire to be in love all the time throughout my life, just like these pretty sunsets and like the poetry of Rumi and like the paintings of Van Gogh and like the tunes of Beethoven and like the lyrics of Gulzar. I feel it all nowadays, to tell you the truth. But most of the time I have been too scared to write to you all this. Once upon a time, I even wrote a letter to you but I ended up putting it in a glass bottle and letting a river float it away wherever it would. That kind of a person I have been, most of the time in my life. It is only now that I am learning to be fearless enough to tell you about my feelings.

Feelings and emotions are beautiful. The giftbox of feelings and emotions makes our life colourful. But so far so long, I have also learned that although we should embrace our feelings but we shouldn’t let these feelings drive our actions and habits. While we remain encapsulated with everyday mortal coils and the webs of humanly conflicts, we should carry the mountain of reason and understanding with us whereever we go, no matter how uncomfortable or restricting it may feel to us. Because my feelings mostly tell me that I don’t want to get up from my sleep in the cosy blanket, and I don’t want to eat healthy foods and I don’t want to go to the park, and all. So, that’s the reason I think reason is important too.

At the same time, you know, reason is not at all about practicality. I see that people talk about practicality all the time, but I have learned that practicality is often a disguise for extreme boredom. As we pop out of the toaster of life and become an adult, we stop believing in things like excitement, fun, and wonderful dreams that appear unrealistic. The idea of practicality is practically taught to us so we become too less practical actually. But I have also learned that we should embrace our boredom when it strikes, and also the feelings of blankness we feel when we feel like grieving about something. If you think about it, you will agree with me that life is full of grief. Grief over what someone said to us, all the words that hurt us, and all the disappointments and failures and heartbreaks we could never get over with.

Another thing I wanted to tell you in this note is that I feel that life is utterly, magnanimously, flamboyantly beautiful. Just look at all these birds flying from their nests towards the sky, the green-green leaves rustling and swinging merrily with the breeze, the trees standing tall and proud, the soil and mud smudged on playing kids’ dresses, the glitter dripping from the nightsky, the luminous gold outpouring from the sunshine, the blend of aromas scurrying from the hot kitchens, the smell of the fresh polish, the laughters on the faces of the loved ones, and all things like that.

To tell you the truth, I totally get it what Helen Keller said in this quote of hers, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” That’s true, dear friend.

Apart from these ponderings about feelings and emotions, I have been lately feeling an extreme love for words. Words, words, so many words! Call me a logophile, if you think. Words, to me, are like crystals and diamonds and sequins and gems and trinkets that I use to embellish and decorate my writing. Like favourite foods, words seem to endow me with utter pleasure.

By saying this, what I really wanted to tell you is that if you are crazy about something in your life, then by all means chase this craziness. Just like I am crazy about feelings and words and foods, you too must be crazy about something. So, I want to tell you that just keep being crazy. Do not ever let your craziness go away just because someone tells you that it’s bad or improper to be crazy. Do not put salt on your own wounds, my friend. Keep being crazy, and keep being in love. I will now end my note with this message, and promise you that I will write more love notes like this, for you. Do tell me if you liked it. And should you want to tell me about something you feel, do not hesitate to write a sweet love note for me. Writing that will make you feel good too, trust me!

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Creativity is in Little Things | Podcast #26 by Neha's Notebook

Birds flitting through the sky like thoughts through the mind.

The texture of the bark of a tree.

The variety of people walking all around like different voices of the heart.

What can be more creative than this?

Sometimes it happens that we look for big ideas and complex insights that we forget to pay attention to the little things that make life beautiful.

We often look at these little things when we are in the phase of life where everything is going low, when everything seems to be going against us. Herein, these little things are our sole comfort.

But even otherwise also, creativity is in the small moments, in little things.

Kurt Vonnegut says, “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things.”

There are electric bhoots dangling in our mind stream like glittery disco balls. They make us feel happy, excited, worried or ecstatic. These are our emotionally-charged thoughts. These thoughts drive us into momentum to live our life. These sparky thoughts are often made up of the little moments we have experienced in our lives over and over, and that have made us feel good.

As we grow old, many of us go on towards chasing the lifestyle of ‘Quiet luxury’. While Quiet Luxury promotes following trendy styles and celebrity lifestyles, there is another kind of lifestyle called ‘Hygge’ that promotes cosiness, contentment and comfort that comes from enjoying the little moments. And contentment too is a luxury, isn’t it so?

Thich Nhat Hanh says that, "There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way."

Remember how even these little moments are created when big universes come together in congruence. The experience of this moment is not an ordinary thing, it is a finely-designed, mathematical and cosmic happening. Alan Watts captured the intensity of this in a quote.

“How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.”

What appears little is not that little. It is matter of utter significance, magnitude and pleasure.

How then can you enjoy the little moments?

Well, for instance, there is a Swedish custom called Fika. In this custom, people sit together to relish their daily cup of coffee with cookies and cakes. So, enjoy coffee and cookies first of all.

Let go of grief from the hurtful moments of the past.

Appreciate yourself for tiny-tiny things even if it appears crazy.

Thank or compliment someone.

Turn off your comparative mind. Just switch it off if you want to be happy.

Make a list of things that make you feel soothing, restful and excited. Then do them.

Celebrate small achievements. 

Focus on the positive (Literally!) 

Live each moment as if you’re in a constant meditation.

Take long walks in the park.

Feel cold breeze flapping and notice sounds of the birds and people. Colours and shapes and smells.

Make your loved ones laugh.

Laugh at yourself.

Have snacks and treats with loved ones.

Listen to your favourite music.

Cook a meal.

Art journal, color and scrapbook.

Practice externalisation of hurtful situations. 

Indulge in catharsis by watching an emotional movie.

Put gasoline of passion on the work you put in accomplishing your deepest desires. Set your heart on fire.

So, be cool, intense and restful!

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The Meaning of Life | Podcast #25 by Neha's Notebook

Life is only as meaningful as it is meaningless.

We laugh, we cry.

Storing our own potions of happiness in our hearts,

Blinking only when a warm salty tear rolls down our cheeks to make us pause and reflect,

What this is really all about?

A game, a dream, a delusion

But if it is an illusion, no one can deny that it is such a magnetic illusion

This world,

It gravitates our emotions towards itself

Its glitz and glamour,

Still, there is a glitch scurrying in this glitz

The scent of which,

Pours through our body and mind,

Like glittery molecules of chemicals streaming and swirling around in our bloodstream,

Making us feel happy, hungry, melancholic or puzzled.

The glitch is our shadow.

We live amongst shadows and walk among shadows.

Shadows, who are squirreled in the deepest recesses of our mind and who sleepwalk their way through life, 

Thinking "only if"...

So prefer not be a shadow.

Choose to be a sparkling ball of starlight.

Choose to be happy.

Smiles are in fashion, but happiness is rare.

Therefore, be the rare one. 

Like unread fiction books inviting you to give them a read, your mind calls you to reflect upon it.

There are mirrors all around who showcase for us what we need to pay attention to, the most, 

Only if we're willing to see through the illusion.

People are always supporting us even when they appear to be doing otherwise. 

Yet amidst this dreamworld, there are moments of comfort…

The chirping of blue-brown birds.

Flaring bonfires.

Clinking and clanking of utensils in the kitchen.

Numbing wintery cold freezing everything as if a chunk of the glacial ice.

Hot summer afternoons and books of notes and chronicles.

Cups of coffee and tables of breads and biscuits. 

A solace to cherish! 

There are bunkums of noise outside,

But there's also a center of stillness inside.

Arrive at this center and be restful. 

Herein sits the poetry of love.

Like a pearl in an oyster, 

An oyster, like which, we humans live layered with labyrinths of mysteries…

Mysteries, the clues to whose solutions, are there in front of our eyes but we lie to ourselves in order to believe that they are not true.

Perhaps because we think we won't be able to bear the reality if we believed that they are really true.

Unlike a geometry theorem in mathematics, any insight about life cannot really be deducted to ‘Hence, proved.’

Because life always challenges our notions and what we know about it from our intellect and experience.

The sole meaning of life is to live it.

Beauty and love and colors. The search for the truth. And should life have another meaning, apart from being lived, then there is a treasure waiting for us at the end of the rainbow of emotions.

So, never give up.

The meaning of life is to live and to never give up on this living.

Talking about the meaning of life, the Pulitzer-prize winning author Annie Dillard says, “We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.”

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Reading a book | Methods of reading a book | Podcast #24 by Neha's Notebook

Reading a b​ook is a multisensory experience. A book bombards our brain with sights, smells, sounds, voices and textures. We come across scenes we have never seen before and meet people we have never met before. Sometimes we collide into new concepts and previously unknown facts. We learn to deal with different circumstances and express a wide range of emotions. Whilst immersed in a book, we explore a brand-new world or find ourselves drifting in an old world of ours. We gaze at the party of ocean waves and at the clusters of stars from a distant point of view, witnessing the story happening.

There is a plethora of details to grasp and learn from the reading of a book. Vocabulary, concepts, quotes, story ideas, references, scene images, characters and more. When organizing our brain after reading a book, eidetic memory helps. Cultivating an eidetic memory enables us to recall these details in the form of photographic screenshots. Storing our information in categories also helps.

Similar to the categorical organization there is a system called Zettelkasten method. In this method, one stores the information collected from the reading of the book into subject headings, tags or numbers by using index cards or slips. Tiago Forte’s second brain method is also a functional method.

Another interesting method to record your reading experiences is Blurting method. As the name suggests, once you complete the reading of the book, you take a notebook and blurt out all the information you can about your reading of the book. This, I think, not only stores the collected information but also enables us to exercise our brain and instill this information deeper into our subconscious. By writing it all down, we make it retrievable for the future. We learn new things and we visualize whip-smart systems.

In addition to the bombardment of information, there is another aspect of reading a book. Reading a book launches a cocktail of hormones inside our body, altering our brain chemistry. While flipping pages, we feel trust and empathy, it boosts the oxytocin hormone and on the other side, a good story boosts the happiness hormone dopamine.

Just as a good emotional song offers us warmth in the cold, a good book stirs the rich menagerie of our emotions, adding to the flamboyant cornucopia of our archetypal psyche. Reading doesn’t only bestow us with a detective mind, it also teaches us how to jump out of love triangles, while also tightening the underpinnings and bolts of our knowledge-stippling subconscious caboose.

Reading is fun. And entertaining. But it is also a workout. An exercise that improves the overall quality and expanse of our mind. A good library is all that we humans need, I believe, apart from good food and nature.

I usually like to read fiction over non-fiction, but for all the books that I read, I post my reviews on Goodreads. So, if you too are an avid reader, let’s connect!

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Book Review: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

As the detective Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express to go on a holiday, the train seems unusually full of passengers at this time of the year. Nevertheless, he gets a compartment with the help of his director friend Bouc. The train travels through its usual route, but halts to a stop as a snowdrift comes in its way.

The dining-car that evening reveals passengers from different countries, cultures and classes. The diversity of its passengers includes an English lady, a Swedish lady, an elderly American woman, an American business tycoon with his secretary and valet, an Italian, an Indian Colonel, an English man, a Hungarian couple, a princess and her maid, among others.
The following morning, a search reveals that the American tycoon named Ratchett is dead in his compartment. What surprises the doctor the most is the way the man was murdered. The man’s body possessed not one, not two but nearly twelve stabs, which, by now were bleeding to wounds.
Being a famed detective, it was the onus of Poirot, to find the man’s murderer. With the help of Bouc and doctor, Poirot examined the dead body, collected the clues, interviewed all the passengers in the train, poozled through their baggages, took their witnessing accounts and jotted down all the evidences in his notebook. Despite being a mystery crackerjack, Poirot’s mind was wracked by several flies in the ointment. Since no one could have entered the train and no one could have left it either, he was perplexed by the realities that were forming in his mind based on the evidences gathered.
If no one entered or exited the train, then who murdered the man? And if there was a passenger involved in the murder, why was there no evidence against any passenger? And even if the murderer was hidden among the passengers, why did he (or she) stab the man in not one, not two but twelve places? What kind of a psychopathic scheme was going on here?
Exercising his brain beyond its capacity, Poirot listened to his instinctual guesses, which in the end turned out to be the truth. Evidently, it was not one person who was involved in the murder, but the entire train, all the twelve passengers, which was also the reason why everybody was acting as everybody else’s alibi, not giving away any real evidence during the search.
This is the second Agatha Christie mystery that I have read, and no wonder, it was as intriguing as chilling. A closed mystery set up in the atypical setting of a train, the book highlighted how masked can be the reality that we see with our eyes. What Poirot saw with his eyes puzzled him, but what he trusted with his instincts led him towards the solution of the murder mystery. So, watch out! ‘Cause everything you see is not always what it seems.
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Let go of the past and be happy | Stellar Nucleosynthesis | Podcast #23 ...

There is a glitch in our soul. Accept it or not, but it is there. The glitch is about something which equates to nothing. We can’t really figure out what this clinging glitch is all about, but we can’t either deny that it is there.

No matter how settled we seem to be in our life, this glitch doesn’t leave us, it clutches at our throat and makes us ask ourselves, “Where I am really going?” Irrespective of how many puzzles we might have solved in our life, we are still as lost as a lone wanderer in an endless forest. We come from nowhere and we are going nowhere. We are all boats to nowhere.

But only those who are lost can ever find their way. If you think you are not lost, that you’ve never been lost, then you can’t really find your way in life. And perhaps, then you don’t even need to find a way. But when we are on this journey, in this journey, the mind is a mysterious radio that keeps playing for us songs, news and stories all the time. It is our sole companion. Interestingly, in its everyday recordings, it also plays for us clues which might make us feel lesser lost. Call them insights and reflections.

Have you ever found yourself fascinated by the fact that the Hindi word for both ‘past’ and ‘ghost’ is the same, that is bhoota?

The past is a ghost. A shadow that chases us, lurking and hovering over our shoulders till the time we arrive at the point of death. It is so close to us as far we try to run away from it. It is this entity of our mind. Thoughts. The ideal people of the society usually don’t pay much attention towards the activity of this entity. They think it is a monster. They distract themselves from this monster. But the truth remains that whoever denies this monster turns out to be bigger a monster.

But even if you turn back and look at this shadow, it means falling into a bottomless abyss. Fighting with the shadows. Nietzsche says that,

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche

We listen to the monster and we are troubled. And if we don’t listen to the monster, even then we’re troubled. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. A comedy of errors.

But who escapes this fate after all? As we grow older, we allow ourselves to turn into this monster, a monster that is characterized by fear, guilt, anger, regrets, shame, obligations and morals. And we subconsciously begin to think that there is nothing more left in life.

We think and fantasize about happy memories of the past all the time as if at this moment we are already dead. Childhood was golden. Benchtop conversations with our friends. Paintings and summers and laughter and pink orange skies. Always grasping happy moments like a hungry and voracious creature, we are always at the edge of tumbling down the slope of disappointment. We look at the lives of others, compare, think and instantly get jolted downwards into the spiral of negative emotions.

Projecting unreal versions of ourselves and the others both in our thoughts and in our life, our reality, at all times is at the brink of collapsing, because, of course, most of our reality is fabricated around the faith we have on the people we are attached to. If this faith shudders, even a bit, our reality collapses too, leaving our heart beat faster and our pulse quicken, making us lose our sense of intellect over our impulses.

Amidst all this, somehow we get trained to count the missing digits in life. Disappointment becomes our natural state. And then we become psychopaths who attempt to lure others to believe in us, to trust us, to love and support us. Without this lure, we are big nobodys. Who I am, I don’t know anymore.

But you don’t need to fret if you believe that there is always a way out for those who are keen to find it. Then mere one streak of thought is enough to cut through the cluster of these powerful shadowy thoughts. If you think you are disappointed and wounded from life, then know that there is a phenomenon called as Stellar Nucleosynthesis. It means, when a star dies, then out of its crashing, a new star is born, a bigger one.

So, live as if you are a glittering supernova. Not a disappointed, fearful and anxious creature. Learn from the past, but also learn to let go of the past when it gets too heavy. Love somebody like they are your universe, become lost in this universe, but don’t be afraid to crash, collapse and rebuild a new universe for yourself if required.

If you always feel the glitch in your soul, you will soon become a glitch yourself. Hence, just let it dissolve. It will only dissolve if you offer it the acceptance, love and surrender it needs. Do not live your life as if you are a simulation, you are a real star after all irrespective of who you are, and whoever you are. Sparkle, and shine bright. Cast your own luminosity out into the dark cosmos.

You may be alone, but don’t be lonely. Be a good company first for yourself, and then you’ll become the same for others too. Do not cling to people like needy and sticky honeybee because in the end nobody likes it. Allow yourself to be loved by the universe by loving yourself first in a greater probability.

Each one of us is a mere permutation and combination of the universe’s mathematical design, but that’s what makes us unique. Beauty is in the flaws. Memorize and hold strong to this trigonometry formula, that, you are perfect just the way you are, with all your imperfections. A starling, a sterling being of infinite magnitude.

Past may be golden, but the future might be glittery if you allow it to be. Sunshine never lessens, it only gets concealed. I am the sun. You are the sun. We are walking each other home. And homecoming and resurrection is never possible without a little burning. Burn like the sun.

And in the end,

Life is not meant to be thought. Life is meant to be lived. And felt. So, let it be crazy, thrilling, not less!

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Book Review: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

A creepy island. A spooky mansion. Ten strangers. A psychopath. A nursery rhyme. And then there were none…This, I think, perfectly describes the story of one of the best-selling novels by Agatha Christie.

 

According to the plot of the book, once there was an island named the ‘Indian Island’, located off the coast of Devon, England. The island was rumoured to be owned by an American millionaire named Mr. Owen. No one had really seen what went or happened on the island, but it was generally reported to be an isolated locale.
On one early autumn, unexpected invitations reach ten strangers in ten different locations; all are invited as weekend guests on the island. Stifled by their respective mortal coils, they accept the invitations and head towards the island.
In an eerie sea-facing mansion where they were invited, the ten characters meet - a judge with an obsession with justice, a schoolmistress, a soldier, a doctor, a police inspector, a religious spinster woman, a butler and his wife, a war general, and a handsome athlete. The arrangements inside the mansion seem to be flawless with rooms furnished with exotic linen, decorative ornaments and generously-provided delectable food. On the dining table, there are ten china figurines of Indian boys. The host, Mr. Owen has not arrived yet in the mansion.
In every room, there is a framed copy of the following nursery rhyme titled Ten Little Indians:
Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon;
One said he’d stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were none.
Things turn sinister when on their first dinner evening, the butler plays a gramophone record as he was ordered by the Mr. Owen he had never seen. The unknown voice in the record accuses each of the ten guests of murdering someone in their past. Soon enough, the guests start getting murdered one by one, and that too occurring just as in this rhyme. Correspondingly, the ten china figurines began to disappear one by one after each murder happening.
The murders occurred in the most suspicious ways that left the remaining guests guessing and guessing who the actual murderer was. They were simply dropping like flies. Driven by terror, the guests then started suspecting each other of the murders.
“From now on, it is our task to suspect each and everyone amongst us. Forewarned is forearmed. Take no risks and be alert to danger. That is all.” They went thinking.
But the murders kept happening, the mystery remaining unsolved till the end. Even when all the ten guests were dead and a police detective visited the island to inspect, he too was unable to decipher the source of all these murders, for the murders were too well-crafted. Each murder threw the suspicion on some or the other guest but nothing became clear.
A spine-chilling horror and classic thriller, this is a closed circle mystery with ‘whodunnit’ feeling lingering till the end. The book is also a chronicle of what a human being is capable of doing especially when their psyche is driven by extreme fear and guilt. The story is a doorway into the psychological world that is muddled up in venomous psychopathy, terrifying realities and enigmatic puzzlement. For me, the novel turned out to be a stem-winding, slightly unsettling but overall a captivating read!
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Book Review: Deception Point by Dan Brown

Deception Point by Dan Brown

Presidential elections were on the cards.

There was a tension between the current US President and his opposition party candidate Senator Sexton.
The main qualm between the two parties was regarding the space organization NASA. According to Senator Sexton, NASA was wasting billions of dollars of budget on space missions that were resulting in zero zippo zilch that is, in nothing at all. On the flip side, according to the current President Herney, the abolishment or privatization of NASA would result in powerful space secrets and talent going into the hands of private organizations who were driven by advertising.

Senator Sexton brainwashed the public saying that the billions of dollars spent on NASA’s fruitless missions could be utilized on students’ education, corporations and jobs. Whereas, President Herney had no evidence to support his argument. It was evident that Senator Sexton would experience the win in the upcoming election and President Herney, loss. But events unfolded in such a way that left both parties baffled beyond wonderment.
Somewhere in the Milne Ice Shelf, beneath thick layers of glacial Arctic ice, NASA discovered a shiny rock, which upon experimentation was concluded to be a meteorite from another planet. The meteorite contained fossils of giant-sized bugs, hinting the proof of extraterrestial life.
The sudden discovery turned the tables for the aspiring presidential parties. Keeping the discovery a secret, President Herney decided to reveal it in a worldwide video conference. Behind the scenes, he brought into picture an intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton from the national intelligence agency NRO.
Rachel was the daughter of Senator Sexton. She had a conflicting relationship with her father, first because she thought her father was a mysogynist, and second because she worked in an organization that belonged to President Herney’s party and her father despised her for that.
Upon NASA’s meteorite discovery, President Herney secretly called Rachel to confirm the discovery by going to Milne Ice Shelf, seeing the meteorite and then brief his team about the same.
Puzzled, before she could digest all the information, she was taken to the Arctic ice in a private chopper. There she met a scientist, a geologist and a celebrity oceanographer who too like Rachel, were personally hired by the president to test the authenticity of the meteorite. They were certain of the discovery that NASA had indeed discovered a meteorite with the proof of life on other planets. They had prepared a documentary film with the evidences which the President would showcase to the world in his video conference.
There was an abrupt turn of events when Rachel and these scientists discovered illuminating planktons in the water of the pit from where the meteorite was taken out. Upon testing further, they found out that the water was salty, hinting that it was from ocean. The moment they made these discoveries, they got attacked by ice bullets from unknown assailants and got thrown in the depths of the Arctic ocean. Although they got saved by a military submarine, they got bushwacked and tracked by these unknown attackers. Meanwhile, Rachel discovered a stunning deception that sent chills down her spine
She needed to reveal this deception to President Herney but before she could, she got attacked again by the unknown assailants who almost shot her down into the moonlit sea waters where sharks were waiting to devour her.
Once rescued from the deadly sea, almost frozen and terrified by the deceptions unfurled, she reached the press conference where her father Senator Sexton was going to destroy NASA and President Herney by revealing the information about the deceptions. But his blind ambition overthrew him in the pit of his own scandalous past activities including bribery and secret affair with his personal assistant. The flabbergasting deceptions of NASA got revealed to the public but also the shadows behind Senator Sexton. But both the NASA as well as President Herney were innocent bystanders, unaware of the whole game.
Ostensively, the meteorite which NASA had discovered as well as the discovery itself was a big fraud well-fabricated by a mastermind to secure NASA from losing its foothold. It was not even a meteorite but an ocean rock burned by slushhydrogen, made to appear like a meteorite and inserted under the ice shelf manually. But what was even bigger a deception was the person who was the mastermind behind all this plan. He was a person Rachel could never expect in lifetimes. Her boss Bill Pickering, the director of the intelligence organization NRO where she worked as the intelligence gister.
Like most hoodwinkers, Pickering too had his own personal motives and agendas behind being overly protective for NASA, for he wanted to acquire it under his intelligence organization. His deception worked in a way killing many innocents who lost their lives to the bullets of his machine guns and his secret poison-tinted spy cameras and flying microbots including president’s loyal and brainy senior advisor Marjorie Tench.
Like other Dan Brown books, this mystery too is intriguing and tantalizing with endless tunnels of twists between twists. The settings are well-described especially the scenes on the Arctic glacier and the adjoining seas. Concepts and facts are researched in detailing which only adds more allurement to the overall story. Each chapter is a drawing card for the following chapter. The unpredictability of the plot makes the book unputdownable till the very end!

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Attitude is Everything - Peptide Addiction & Externalization Narrative T...

Have you experienced your world suddenly turning pink at the thought of someone, and suddenly turning black at the thought of someone else? It could even be the thought of the same person, in two entirely different scenarios. Only a mere thought can shift the reality of our life from A to Z or from Z to A.

Believe it or not, we live in our own universe. We may think otherwise, but we spend our entire lives in the confines of our head. There is a difference between thoughts and reality, yet our brain is the kind of electrochemical organ that cannot distinguish between the two. Whether you think negatively or encounter an actual negative situation, your brain takes both as just the same and generates corresponding negative emotion in both the cases. And not to say this, but our head is a terribly lunatic place.

Thoughts are codswallops and flapdoodles rumbling in the space of our head, causing us to feel happy and sad. The thoughts running in our head make us flip characters, feel emotions, play roles and identify with archetypes.

Sometimes we experience regular nonsesical thoughts while sometimes the chemical behind a thought is much more intense. In this case these are called as intrusive thoughts. Intrusive thoughts are involuntary thoughts that arise suddenly and out of nowhere. They come in all shapes and sizes but typically tend to manifest as disturbing images, taboo topics, or harmful scenarios that we imagine playing out and impacting either ourselves or our loved ones.

When we talk about thought reframing, it is quite possible that we may reframe certain thoughts, but with intrusive thoughts it becomes nearly impossible to work with the thoughts. Our body gets hooked to the peptides released by these intense thoughts and we may even experience intense biochemical changes in our body. Think of aggression, rage, anger, violence, terror, love attachment, cult motivation and likewise. Emotions like these have too strong chemical reactions to be controlled by mere thought reframing.

In this case, we require something that lies behind and beyond all these noisy layers of thoughts, intrusive or not. This is called as “externalization narrative technique”. It involves looking at a thought or emotion as an externalized object rather than identifying with it as if it was the reality. Just think about it. If we identify with every thought we have, we’ll turn crazy in no time. We’ll do insane things and will be nothing short of mad. Because our thoughts are typically anxious creatures and angry entities seeking chemical feed from our attention. If we give them this feed, they magnify and start eating up the fabric of our consciousness, causing us restless and out of control.

Spiritual alchemy, which is all about transmutation from a lower energy to a higher energy, is about how much distance can we cultivate from the intense-st of our thoughts. Its about shining the light on something which is the witness of all this thought-drama.

We need a higher layer of consciousness to throw light on this realm. It is crucial that we equip ourselves with the knowledge of “Who I am?” Unless I know that I am something beyond the persona and the identities, I cannot shine light on the witness of this asylum of thoughts.

Love is a drug and most of us buy into it. But what we usually call as love is not even love at all. It is an attachment based on chemicals and peptide addictions, which is actually not good for our health. Peptide addiction is not only about a substance or a person, but it can also be about technology such as our mobile phones. It is not us who can frame our minds but we enable a higher channel of consciousness to reframe it. Our job is to witness, and to witness the witnesser even.

Telescoping through the entire frame in which a thought is appearing, we stand apart from it. Externalize the thought. Notice/Observe the thought. Keep observing it until it deconstructs itself in front of your awareness and dissolves into the space, revealing to you an insight.

If you are thinking what is the use of it, then you haven’t yet lived your life to the fullest, because once you live, you will recognize what ill of a suffering thoughts can cause to a human being. It stops us from exploring all that is possible in us. We surely need a riverbank to flow in life, don’t we?

Understand this with a little bit of science…

Your body makes peptides. These peptides are produced and released by the neurons. They're strings or short chains of amino acids, which are the "building blocks" of proteins and that play important roles in biological processes.

In each cell, there are thousands and thousands of receptors. Each cell is specific to a certain kind of peptide. When we have feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, excitement, happiness or nervousness, each separate emotion releases its own flurry of neuropeptides. These peptides move through the body and connect to those receptors that change the structure of the cell. When these cells divide and multiply, the new cells created too will match the kind of peptide that the old cells were exposed to.

Thus if you have been bombarding your cells with peptides from a negative attitude, you are literally programming your cells to receive more of those negative peptides in the future. Even worse, you are decreasing the number of receptors of positive-attitude peptides, making yourself inclined towards negativity. This peptide addiction can literally alter the brain’s communication pathways.

It involves changes in the brain regions responsible for decision-making, impulse control, and judgment. While peptides have essential functions in the brain, excessive or prolonged activation of these systems can lead to imbalances and potential addiction.

This is why it takes a persistent positive attitude to reprogram one’s cells from the core. Every cell in your body is replaced every 2 months. So if you have a tendency of negative attitude, start today. Start reshaping the biological structure of your cells with the light of witnessing consciousness, instead of whatever emotion you are physically addicted to right now.

And then like the green-yellow colour of light after a summer storm, your life will be a resurrection into a pleasant journey!

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Be a Wild Dope Soul (The Science of Dopamine) | Podcast #21 by Neha's No...

Falling in love. Getting awed by someone’s charm. On days like sparkling pink sapphires, gazing into the skies. Unquiet restlessnesses of the quiet amber afternoons. Dragonfly-sized microbots flying in the space. The crispness of breeze. The warmth of salty tears….

Life is a chocolate-box but the one full of fascination. There is tragedy but there is also comedy. The beauty is all around. Yet what makes this beauty so beautiful is something that resides already within the gleaming monument of our body with the crowning jewel of the brain glowing inside it.

According to the primordial soup theory, this body-brain combo is a chemical soup. Billions of years ago, life arose from the primordial soup of chemicals. Amino acids linked together to form proteins and as a result, this sophisticatedly-designed human body came into evolution.

Inside this chemical soup, electricity flurries in glittering pockets of dopamine molecules. This dopamine is responsible for all the things that feel to us like pink candy, sugarboo and honeypie.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter molecule that plays several important roles in the cells; it is a feel-good pleasure hormone, a chemical that gives you a good feeling. It is also responsible for the 4 Ms – memory, mood, motivation and movement.

As dopamine rises and falls, our mood and the mind also swings at the rhythm of highs and lows. Low dopamine levels are associated with brain fog, mood swings, and muscle spasms. Whereas, each time we feel anxious, insomniac, excess energy or hallucinatory, we have high dopamine levels. When dopamine rises, so does your motivation to act. When it falls, you feel less inspired.

Ever wondered, why after drinking coffee, your mind gets flooded with ideas? Well, its because dopamine is the key to the locks in the neurons. It is a neurotransmitter that transmits the information from neuron to neuron causing the stream of information to flow free.

But it is not only the coffee that makes us feel dopamine high. Dopamine is also one of the four happiness chemicals among oxytocin, endorphin and serotonin. When we feel happy or pleasant, or when we like something a lot, it releases a lot of dopamine in our bloodstream adding to the good-feeling we are feeling. Neurons release dopamine and make us feel highly motivated and excited. When we read a good story, listen to a song, make art, write poetry or watch an emotional movie, it also releases dopamine inside our body, making us feel pleasure.

Brain, the crown jewel of human body, sitting in its bony shell and dipped in a protective fluid is the labyrinth where these dopamine molecules are released and make us feel good. And so, dopamine is a chemical that is highly responsible for altering our brain chemistry.

Inside the mystery box of the brain, there are thoughts swirling every moment. Believe it or not but science has proven that each thought releases a certain chemical. While some thoughts release the happiness chemical dopamine, some others release the stressful or destructive chemicals.

The moment a chemical is released, there are neuropeptides in the brain that experience neural differentiation. How this differentiation happens? Well, each of our cells has receptors attached to it. Each receptor is sensitive to a certain kind of a protein called peptide. There are receptors for negative or angry peptides and there are receptors for positive or loving peptides. The moment a thought pops up, a chemical is released, and the receptors receive this chemical. Now, when these cells multiply, they multiply according to the type of receptor that has been activated in them. If negative peptides have been activated, more negative receptor cells will be produced, and the same with the positive receptor cells.

Thoughts are nothing but electrochemical reactions that occur in the billions of nerve cells called neurons and trillions of connections called synapses.

Our brain is like a billion-edged tesseract, a tesseract within tesseracts, too complex, that enables us to look at a leaf, tree, grass, flower, sky and ocean, all of it at once.

Every thought triggers a neurochemical change in the brain. Thoughts program the cells and the way our cells our programmed, it determines our overall chemistry and how we actually feel.

Therefore, activities such as meditation, reading books, good music and stories program the brain chemistry by releasing either dopamine or its opposite chemical cortisol. We either feel happy or we feel worried.

The point of all this science is that the beauty you see in the world is all inside you. When you fall in love or experience a heartbreak or feel attached to someone or something or you find something beautiful, its actually the chemical soup stirring in a certain way inside you. If you change the way this soup is stirred, you can change the way how these chemicals make you feel. Thoughts control this chemical soup. Change the thoughts, change the chemistry.

So, fall in love, explore the beauty of life, engage in contemplation, observe your thoughts, inspire yourself. 

Be the wild dope soul that you already are!

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World is a Mirror (Tools to Enhance your Imagination) | Podcast #20 by N...

Video Highlights – Tools to enhance your Imagination:

·        Curiosity

·        Practice

·        Take pleasure in everyday things

·        Ask questions

·        Look for Mystery

·        Write Soliloquies

·        Anthropomorphism

·        To-do lists, wordboards and mindmaps

·        Concepts and facts

Read full post below:

Each one of us, when we are born, our mind is in the state of tabula rasa. Tabula rasa is a state of mind which is like a blank slate, free of all preconceived notions or beliefs. Our imagination is rich with rainbows, colours, magic, wonder and characters. Stream of emotions flow freely and playfulness is a natural state. But as we grow older, as we get educated, we gain knowledge and we learn things, then even though it wakes up our faculty of reasoning and observation, it also puts a gatekeeper at the dam of our emotions. The bony finger of our intellect points towards the spinner and wizard of our imagination, restricting it with too much logic and conflict.

Imagination is a muscle that needs to be exercised and stretched like all other muscles, in order for it to function at its highest capacity. According to Google, imagination is the ability to create mental pictures and new ideas.

Like physical exercises, there are mental exercises that can enhance the potential of our imagination. As we look forward to boosting our imagination, the world outside acts as our better half, a mirror that unfolds to us gateways to interesting ideas and picturesque worlds, only if we pay close attention.

For instance, all the monsters in the movies have been born as a result of experiencing anger within ourselves or angry people in our lives, either in real life or through stories and movies. Cartoons, characters, fantasy wonderlands, songs and objects have been fabricated through the department of our imagination.

So, pay attention and observe. Both yourself and the world outside. These are fascinating mirrors working to reveal to us marvellous insights and intuitive knowledge.

Then, practice asking questions.

How many stars are there in the universe? How many sand particles in all the deserts of the world? How many grass blades in your house garden or nearby park? How many flowers are there in the world? How many peaks? How many valleys? How many shades of colours? How many total sunsets passed till now and how many waves in the oceans? How many experiences you have had and how many number of unique feelings you’ve experienced? How many words do you know in total? Are all these things finite or infinite?

There are two worlds. One is the outer world, the world of objects, and the other is the inner world, the world of words and images. We can touch the objects of the outer world, we can see and smell and hear them. But when it comes to the objects of the inner world, we cannot touch them or point towards them, because according to logic, they don’t exist. Where are the fantasies we see in our head? Only in our head and nowhere else.

The gateway to this inner world is curiosity, and the faculty which spins and creates this world is imagination. Asking questions triggers the imagination to spin new worlds and display interesting pictures in your consciousness.

But imagination is different from thoughts. Science says that a human typically encounters approximately 60000 thoughts per day. But having these thoughts doesn’t mean having a colourful imagination. Thoughts are merely recycling of the old data from our memories and experiences. But when we learn to rise above thoughts, it stirs our imagination from other dimension of consciousness.

By human design, we are mathematical creatures. But imagination is something which is beyond all this mathematics. It puts too many subconscious layers on a picture to be deciphered and decoded.

And although imagination is about fantasies and la-la lands, there is one exercise that enhances the imagination like nothing. It is taking pleasure in everyday things. Sipping morning coffee with pleasure and attention, noticing your first thoughts in the morning and the last thoughts in the night, feeling the weather, taking interest in everything – activities like these help us stay centered in the present moment, which triggers the muscle of our imagination.

Another idea to stir your imagination is to see MYSTERY. Sensing mystery in everyday objects enable us to access our unconscious and deepen our focus on the screen of our mind where imagination carves new worlds. What is the mystery behind a dew-drippy leaf? How was it created? How did this flower got its fragrance? Why isn’t fire blue in colour? Why do I do what I do? Mystery is the passkey to open many doors of creativity. All the mystery novels are metaphors for the mystery of our minds only.

Another great idea to enhance your imagination is SOLILOQUY. Soliloquy is a fancy word for talking to oneself. Why do you have the opinions that you have? What things interest you? Why do you perceive the world the way you do? Keep a pocket notebook and record your point of view on various objects, feelings and experiences. Like diary entries, writing soliloquies can help you discover and unlock the deeper parts of yourself, and hence your imagination.

Adding to this, a great tool to prick your imagination is anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is assigning human characteristics to non-human objects such as animals, things etc. Don’t we read children stories with animal cartoon characters and speaking wardrobes and whispering dolls? All this comes under anthropomorphism.

Make to-do lists, wordboards and mindmaps.

Delve into facts and concepts. Did you know that the mathematical Fibonacci sequence can be seen in the branching of blood vessels and the arrangement of leaves around a stem, as well as in the spiral patterns of the human ear?

Did you know that there is anywhere between 60000 to 100000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. If they were taken out and laid end-to-end, they would be long enough to travel around the world more than three times? Our imagination is even vaster than this network, only if we learn to evoke it properly.

There is a psychological condition known as tarantism. In this condition a person bitten by a tarantula experiences an excessive impulse to dance. We too are funny little creatures bitten by the tarantula of our minds, and throughout our lives, we keep on dancing to the puppetry of our mind. The more we practice, the more we exercise the tarantula of our mind, the richer and incredible is the dance of our imagination. Isn’t this surreal and bizarre?

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