Choose Your Words Wisely | Podcast #29 by Neha's Notebook | Poetry

A word is a door. Behind each word is a world, one beautiful than the other, full of magic, miracles, charm and wonder. As a word is uttered, it opens a door in the space of the mind, and this door leads to a land full of possibilities. Sometimes it leads to a painful moment of the past while sometimes, it opens into a wonderland of future.

The human mind is a container of zillions of such words, each locked in their little-little caskets, jingling like crystals, and producing the music of assorted thoughts. When one of these little containers is stirred or triggered with our attention, it crackles open into another world, a new world is spun for us to witness, feel and experience. Sometimes a memory, sometimes a song, a book, a fantasy, a dream.

Words are also malleable goldlike constellations shimmering in the galaxy of our minds, waiting to shapeshift into a new form. Words are treasure, each one similar to a gemstone, a bead, a pearl, a jewel. Like treasures and jewels, words can embellish, adorn, colour and decorate our minds.

Words are catalysts and accelerators for our transformation too. Sometime they can lead us to open the door of a fresh perspective, a positive growth mindset, a healing emotion, or likewise.

A word is an image. Each image corresponds to some of our memory or experience. Therefore, each word is a doorway into the past and future, into both the land of gold and the land of ghosts. A word can turn out to be an arrow or a mesmerising flower, a flavour or a majestic tower.

Words can hurt and words can heal. Words can come out of anger or words can come out of love.

So, choose your words wisely.

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Success, failure and temporary feelings | Podcast #28 by Neha's Notebook

Failure is a Pandora’s box. It makes you feel pathetic. It makes you feel like you are a nobody. But success too is equally a pandora’s box. Success is a complicated thing. Once you succeed, you get to think, “Phew, now I am somebody!” After all the effort and the work you put into something, you finally have that moment. But the moment you think you are somebody, the world hits on your chest with a hammer telling you that no, you are not a somebody. You are a nobody. Often, this hitting comes in the form of comparison. You get to see someone else who is doing far better than you. You thought that you have arrived somewhere but as you look outwards you feel that you are back to the drawing board.

And then you begin again, in a race to reach the point when you will again get to feel that you are a somebody. From somebody to nobody, from nobody to somebody, we are always spinning in this circle of time. When we observe this circle of time occuring inside us, it becomes easier to step out of it, and understand that both of these feelings, high and low, are simply parts of a process of life – a process of becoming better, of becoming wiser, of rising beyond temporary feelings and of keep going.  

Am I a somebody or am I a nobody? It’s just a matter of time. Otherwise, I am none of these. Its only my thinking that makes me a somebody at one point and a nobody at the other point of time.

If you allow people and comparisons to determine how you should feel about yourself then you will end up living an unsatisfactory, discontended and unhappy life. Whether you feel like a somebody or a nobody, remember that it’s just a matter of time. Both of these are temporary feelings and soon enough they will dissolve back into the space. But when they go, they leave us with a sense of re-understanding of our identity, which is more than a person or an individual flitting through the space-time. Remember, feelings are simply visitors, let them come as they come and let them go as they go. Understanding this enables us to manage these emotions.

The reality is that, you are not as bad as you think you are when you have failed, and you are not as good as you think you are when you have succeeded.

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There is no substitute of hard work | Podcast #27 by Neha's Notebook

HARD WORK, SMART WORK AND BEING EASY ON YOURSELF

Look at the artists. How meticulously they doodle each flower and each dot to create beautiful, enchanted and picturesque worlds. Look at the Bollywood superstars. How they dedicate themselves to immersing into their characters by working day and night. Talk about programmers, who spend night after night coding everything from awesome video games to the mechanisms of our microwaves. Look at writers, who rework and rework their pieces until they read perfect. There, literally, is no substitute for hard work.

On the flip side, when we think about smart work, smart work is actually a mutual of hard work, and not an alternative. Smartness is a skill we can use to provide boundary to our hard work. Smart work is something that is required in managing daily to-dos and juggling multiple projects. But it is not exclusive or a substitute of hard work. Smart work doesn’t mean going lazy on the details of our work. Smart work is required in the process of managing the hard work the right way so we don’t get burned out. But hard work is something that has no shortcuts. It is true that some jobs do require more thinking than more doing, but most jobs, especially the creative ones, require the quality of hard work. Mostly, what needs to be done, needs to be done. And it’s always good for us if we give our best in whatever we work we do. Hard work refines our character from the inside out; it polishes our penchants and prepares us to share our innermost gifts in the best possible way.

However, at the same time, hardwork doesn’t have to be too effortful. it can be effortless like nature. Lao Tzu said that, "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." Hard work doesn’t mean being anxious or stressed or overwhelmed. Put a pinch of smartness into it, and you’ll find that physical exhaustion actually feels good if it ends in joy. And do remember to put love in everything you do. So much so that hard work doesn’t feel hard at all.

But by any means hardwork doesn’t mean being hard on yourself. Have a good night’s sleep. Eat good food. Relax. Enjoy and have leisure time. And master the art of smart work the way working moms do. Work hard, but manage it the smart way. You can only work hard if your body and mind are functioning at their greatest capacity, and they work at their greatest capacity when you are absolutely easy on yourself.

Working hard is not an oldtimer, orthodox concept or something that needs to be changed. One doesn’t need to choose between hard work and smart work. Both of these are required for the proper functioning of an individual’s routine. Working hard and managing smart is one of the best possible ways to accomplish your daily tasks.

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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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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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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

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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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Reprogram your brain through Writing (Reticular Activating System) | Pod...

There is a wedding or special occasion in your family. You are thinking about buying some jewels. And suddenly when you go to the market, your attention catches all the jewellery stores in the market which earlier you didn’t even notice. Everywhere you seem to be seeing jewellery stores. These stores were there earlier too, but earlier you didn’t notice them, earlier your attention was somewhere else, like on the various food joints in the market. But at this moment, your attention is reflecting back to you mainly the jewellery stores.

Another example. You are in a crowd of people who are all talking to each other loudly. There is too much noise in the crowd that you can’t hear anything properly. But somewhere in the crowd, someone calls your name. Immediately, your attention drops the noise and gets focused on the direction from which the call of your name is coming.

This is a mystery about the phenomenon of attention. There is an enigma in the process of attention that can only be deciphered when observed too closely.

Just like a photograph is developed in the dark and not in the light, in the same way, this phenomenon of attention occurs in the darkness of our brain inside which we cannot see until we observe ourselves. In this darkness of the brain glows a network as wide as the width of a pencil, which governs this phenomenon of attention. Let us understand what it is.

First of all, there are mainly two parts of our mind. One is the conscious mind (CM) and other is the subconscious mind (SM). The CM processes nearly 40 bits of information per second while the SM processes millions and billions of bits of information every second. There is a system which acts as a filter between the CM and SM. This system is called Reticular Activating System (RAS). This system is a network of nerves located in the brainstem.

The RAS sets the programming in our brain through which we see and perceive the world. Of all the data that we consume from our everyday world, RAS processes the data, sends it to the subconscious storehouse and filters and prioritizes it for you so you can focus your attention on a particular information. And then you begin to see what you desire to see.

Throughout our life, this system keeps on constantly changing and shifting. Just realize, how as an adult you don’t see the same situation as you saw it when you were a child. Likes, dislikes and favorites change too. Even our deepest attachments, infatuations and crushes lose their attraction over time. This is all because the RAS keeps on getting programmed and reprogrammed.

In t₁ moment of time, you are not the same person as in t₂ moment of time. Our life is the sum of these moments t₁ + t₂ + t₃+….+ t_n

During these moments, the quality of our life depends on the programming of our RAS filters. When we write, we begin to shift this programming, telling the RAS what things to prioritize and what things to pay attention to.

The more depth we add to our RAS, the richer is the quality of life.

As you take a scrappy notebook and scratch on it with the charcoal tip of the pencil, or metallic tip of a pen, you tell your RAS to pay attention to little things. Writing activates the RAS and helps you zero down your attention so that the stream of your thoughts can flow free.

When you journal or write something such as an affirmation or an intention, it programs your RAS to pay attention to all those things that are useful or supporting of your goal.

As for the creative process, there are two writing tools that enable us to reprogram our RAS to look at life in a fresh, colourful way.

One is Exposition and the other is description. Exposition is where you write something by exposing it in full-on detailed manner, by ripping it apart to shreds and by jotting down a picture to its pixels.

Google defines exposition as this…

An exposition is when you look at something as if you are looking at it for the very first time, or as a newborn. How would you then describe it, not as an adult but as a child?

When we write an exposition, we program our RAS to look at the world from a child’s fresh point of view. We code our brain to pay attention to little things, to ask questions, and to sense the mystery and fantasy in everyday things. 

Say for instance, if you ask an adult they say,

I live on planet Earth.

Whereas a child says,

I am sitting in a blue-green ball floating in the black ocean of space.

So, writing an exposition programs our RAS to learn to focus our attention on a particular window of time, to move and control our attention on our will, to see things clearly and in a magnified way.

On the flip side, description is the way how you describe what you see. What details you express, and in what words you express the details. A description is basically a picture you paint with the words.

When we write a description, our RAS gets intently focused on the tiniest details, colours, textures, sounds and smells. This programs our RAS to be more aware and attentive of our surroundings.

The more we learn to be aware of our surroundings, the more awareness we begin to have of ourself. And the more awareness we have of ourselves, the deeper we understand everything.

So, all in all, whether you wish to mirror your desired reality in the world outside or you want to be more creative, then write your way to reprogram your RAS.

Author of Bird by Bird Anne Lamott writes,

Writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around. – Anne Lamott

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Be Your Own Hero | Podcast #18 by Neha's Notebook

Have you sometime found yourself getting distracted in periods while you’re reading a book? Somehow you seem to get stuck on a page, and while your eyes are in front of the page, your attention seems to be wandering somewhere else. Thoughts pull on your attention and don’t let you concentrate on the reading of the book. Similar to this, while we’re trying to create the best life for ourselves, distractions from the world hover over our head, making every possible attempt to distract us from our mission.

These distractions are the leftovers of the voices of people who insulted or undermined us, the revengeful shrieks for those who always criticized us or tried to stop us from our goal, phantom characters of people who attempted every possible way to make us feel down. The distractions can also be the voices of our own fears, our self-limiting beliefs and our ‘can’t do’ attitudes.

Another surprising distraction can be our greatest inspirations, role models and people we love and our attachments. While we feel safe in the cocoon of our own personal heroes and loved ones, this often prevents us from seeking out the part of us that is the greatest, that is fearless, that roars and rages and burns with the inextinguishable flame of greatness. This flame glows inside our heart and endows us with the courage to stand alone in life, to be a human and to develop the muscle of inner strength.

As a child, we start off by painting our own rainbows, but what we need in the next stage is a titanium ink with which to write our destiny, an ink that won’t be scraped over or erased.

We look for fantasy characters to define our imaginations, we believe the world of magic dust and dragons and heroes, yet we end up forgetting that the fortresses and castles where these worlds reside lie within our own hearts.

But as coffee in the cup gets colder, our passion fades like vintage love letters, but the rose of dreams never truly loses its perfume. Like hilltop breeze, a new struggle always refreshes our soul. We humans are thermodynamic containers but our entropy is too complex to be comprehended by our mere brain. We need something greater than our brain to contain our greatest worries, to surrender and trust that our greatest dreams can come true despite the distractions that sit like chips on our shoulders.

If you have spent your childhood in India, then you must be aware of the tale of Vikram and Betaal. Betaal is a ghost, a phantom which prince Vikram carries on his shoulders. The ghost keeps on whispering stories in the ears of the prince and the prince has to hear them so as to get the ghost to cooperate. Similarly, all of us are carrying our own ghosts on our shoulders. In order to let our ghost cooperate in fulfilling our dreams and goals, we ought to listen and to pay attention. With attention and awareness, the power of the ghost lessens and the voice of the heart emerges out like a shark’s fin emerges out of the sea’s deep waters.

What others can’t see for you, you can see for yourself. Carve your own reality, but most of all, trust your reality, even if it is a subject of comic to your fellow men and women. The concoction of self-belief and a little bit of ignorance may be bitter enough but is essential for the fulfillment of our dreams.

There lies a scream within our heart that we try to hide but that which can never be hidden. Discard the distractions. And be your own hero…

With this, wish you a fresh start and a happy new year!

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Be Alive! - The Story of the Black Hole | Podcast #17 by Neha's Notebook

Once upon a time there was a gigantic black hole in the cosmic wild. The black hole knew the address of an aperture to another universe, a passageway to the Wonderland. But there was no one who the black hole could tell this address to, because whatever came near the black hole got ripped apart to particles and lost forever. The black hole could form no friendships, could not let anyone come near it. A star came near it, it got lost. A planet came near it, it got lost.

Over time, the black hole became sad and embarrassed about its own gravitational power. As the sadness grew more and more, it caused stirrings in the heart of the black hole. The sadness started drawing portraits of anguish with black crayons, the wax of which was dripping with sorrow and grief, grief over an invisible feeling, a feeling of missing something, missing someone who could last forever till its lifetime. The black hole after all could hold on to nothing due to its endless deep dark abyss.

The sadness of the black hole dreamed of a yellow golden sunlit land with sparkle-shooting butterflies and glittering green grasses but each time it opened its eyes, all it could see was only black darkness.

Then the sadness cried a tear which created a sea. Marrying the rolling waves, the sadness got lost and dissolved into the black hole. The portraits of anguish that the sadness had created now spewed hot black tar and lava. If a human could see this lava spewing from the mouth of the black hole, they would imagine lots of black ink smudging a novel, a novel telling the black fiction of slaughterhouses, wrath and wildfires. But since it was a black hole, no one was there to witness this black lava spewing inside the black hole. So, the lava exhaled black gas and like a thought, got lost and dissolved back into the black hole. Whatever was created inside a black hole also got dissolved into the black hole. What happened inside the black hole remained in the black hole.

With nothing to communicate its feelings, the black hole felt lonely. Snaking through the passes of thoughts and emotions, the black hole wrote poems, crafted chunky art journals and painted flowers. Leaping and hopping like frogs, waving like boatflags, it moved around the Milky Way galaxy trying to find a place to stay.

It finally chose the center point of the galaxy as its home. From the center of the Milky Way galaxy, it looked down upon a blue-green ball. On this blue-green ball were many jelly-like dolls moving hither-tither and casting a mumbo-jumbo throughout the space of the ball.

In tiny mudhouses, tiny coffeecups clinked and clanked. Tiny tinkle bells jingled and jangled. There were tree symbols in the landscapes. There were tiny dream books in which there were the stories of jinx and magic stars and fantasy. Stories were getting penned over open lunch boxes and tiny-tiny stairs, tiny dolls sitting with their tiny doll friends. As the black hole listened with its high frequency ears, the tiny dolls were talking about a black hole which resided at the center of the galaxy. Hearing which, the black hole became wonderstruck. These tiny jelly-dolls were all talking about it. The black hole became happy and with utter happiness it ballooned into an even more gigantic size. Wanting to tell the dolls on the blue-green ball that it was feeling alive despite its gravitation.

So, if some days you feel like a black hole, never be embarrassed of your powers. Never be embarrassed of being alive. Being alive means continuous change and movement and evolution. Being alive means not holding onto anything. Being alive means not saving your feelings for the future.

Don’t save cakes and joy and love and laughter for special occasions, joy which arrives so subtly, like the murmuration of stars and like the warm glow of galaxies.

And remember that the most serious and exquisite things in the world are those that can be comprehended and grasped by a child’s heart.

So, stop being too serious. just be a child, be alive!

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