Category: Human Talk

Human Talk #4 Passion, Intimacy or Commitment: what do you feel is more important to have in love?

The Unconventional Monk75 Comments

Love is one of the most complicated and at the same time, the simplest feeling we as humans experience. Greeks had tried to differentiate love/lovers in their own way into eight different ways based on the way it is expressed and reacted upon. For example, they had discussed Eros, which is romantic or sexual love and Pragma, which is enduring love and almost opposite of Eros. No matter how they are defined, there is no dispute over the fact that wars had been fought in the name of love and at the same time people had sacrificed everything for love.

Psychologists say that there are ideally three components of love-Intimacy, Passion and Commitment. The intensity may vary and of course, there is no mandate that all of these should be present in a love relation too. As per them, each should be present and in a balanced form.

All of us may have already used familiar words like infatuation, liking and obsession, from our adulthood. All these can be understood well from checking how the combination of intimacy, passion and commitment is working in it.

Let us examine some of the familiar love relations we have heard or experienced:

Infatuation or at times “Love at first sight “: Passion will be strong and intense. But intimacy and commitment may be totally missing.

Romance: Intimacy and passion may be high, but rarely combined with a commitment

Liking: Intimacy will be there and maybe strong too. But passion and commitment may be totally missing.

Fatuous love happens due to strong physical attraction and normally will have a strong passion and a weak commitment, but there will be very little or no intimacy.

Empty love: Something which is getting very common in marital relations now. Only commitment will be present. Passion and intimacy may be completely missing.

Compassionate love: intimacy and commitment will be very strong, but passion may be missing.

Ideal love: Passion, Intimacy and commitment are equally present and balanced. Anyone who is in ideal love will take the role of best friend and lover for each other.

Also, anyone in any of these love relations can be either totally dependent on each other or interdependent or completely independent and living parallel lives.

You are very lucky and blessed if you are going through and experiencing ideal love. But many of us will not be in that state. So, what can help us in enduring the love relation we have right now. Let us check about passion first. It is not easy to be passionate suddenly if you don’t feel that physical attraction to your partner or feel to be intimate with them. But then is it easy to have an Intimacy? It may be comparatively easy, provided you are emotionally connected to him/her, and you have good trust in them. You will truly wish them to be happy and it may be comparatively easier to improve your intimacy if you really want to. And about commitment. Do you feel it is easy to improve your commitment in the relation ?? for me, from my experience, is the most complicated part of any love relation? Commitment normally comes from deep inside. No matter how desperately you try with your conscious mind, commitment will not happen, if your subconscious mind is not willing to accept it.

Passion, intimacy and commitment have their own role to play in a love relationship. It is meaningless to say that one is more important than the other. The only important thing is to be aware of what is present and its intensity and what is not present.

And there is the case of unrequited love, especially the ones which is carried from past lives. This may program your thought process and stimulate attracting people into your life. We will discuss it in detail next time.

Let me now share the story of Alexandra. She was born into a very rich family. Her parents were very busy with their schedules and had engaged many housemaids and nannies to take care of Alexandra. Nannies were really kind and they took good care of her. Growing up Alexandra used to hear a lot of stories of spirits and ghosts from her nannies. In fact, she was the one who always used to request more spirit stories every day. She loved to hear these stories and always used to say that she used to have dreams involving spirits. She never seemed to be afraid of any of these dreams.

She was a studious student and completed her education well. She was not interested in getting a job and used to spend all the time in her big mansion in dreams and most of the time in a happy mood. Her parents started to notice some differences when she told them that she is not interested in marriage, and she didn’t find anyone good enough. They initially brushed it away assuming it was a temporary feeling, but when even after few years she was strongly holding on to the same decision, her parents got worried. They started noticing her closely then. They noticed that she was happy all the time and used to spend a lot of time admiring herself in the mirror and spending time inside her closed bedroom. They wanted to understand her more and got a new maid, as a friend for her. The intention was to understand what is going on inside her mind. The new girl, Sara stayed like a shadow of Alexandra and checked everything she was doing. The only place where Alexandra didn’t allow Sara, was inside her bedroom at night. She always insisted on sleeping alone.

Sara noticed that Alexandra used to chat happily looking at the mirror and occasionally to thin air. She used to be even very shy at times as if she were speaking to her lover. Sara overheard Alexandra saying how much she feels happy to have “him” with her and how much she was waiting for the night. This made her parents concerned and no matter how much they tried Alexandra didn’t allow anyone inside her room at night. One day, as per the instruction by Alexandra’s parents, Sara informed her that she is going to meet a friend and will return only the next day. As planned, Sara hid inside Alexandra’s bedroom the whole day and waited till night. By nighttime Alexandra came in and closed the door behind her.

Hiding behind a cupboard Sara could see and hear everything which was happening. She could see Alexandra hymning a song very happily and changing herself into some very revealing clothes. She seemed to be very happy and then went to her bed to sleep. Within few minutes she slept too. Few hours passed and Sara was in double mind whether to move out of the room and some much need rest. Then suddenly, Sara started hearing sounds. First very soft and then getting stronger and louder. It was moans of pleasure from Alexandra. Sara could see Alexandra was already naked by then and her whole body was violently shaking as if someone was having a wild physical intimacy with her. She was moaning and laughing hysterically and then everything ended after some time. There was total silence and Sara could see Alexandra sleeping peacefully with happiness and content on her face. Sara was shaking with fear when she came out of the room.

Alexandra’s parents brought many psychologists and later an exorcist to bring her out of the situation. Psychologists told them she was having a rare situation called Spectro philia, wherein which one is attracted to ghosts or spirits. Due to this Alexandra was fantasizing about ghosts and was often imagining scenarios involving sexual events between her and spirits. They tried different methods but couldn’t make any difference in Alexandra. Then her parents brought  an exorcist, who after multiple interactions told them that she was deeply fantasized and controlled by Incubus, which is a demon in male form who, according to mythological and legendary traditions lies upon sleeping women to engage in sexual activity with them and Alexandra was deeply in love with it 😊 For her, Incubus was the ultimate man who was giving her all sorts of emotional support  and physical pleasure she can imagine and she was in an inseparable state of mind with him

Whether it was a delusion, Spectro philia or a spirit encounter, the exorcist using his exorcism skills or psychological approach, was successful in removing these thoughts out of Alexandra’s mind in the next few months. But what went away with it was also the absolute bliss Alexandra used to show and feel. Alexandra never showed so much happiness ever then, even though she started going outside and started working. After few years she got married willingly as per her parent’s wish. After her first night, she was found hanging dead in her bedroom, when her husband returned from work, leaving a lot of questions unanswered.

Just a few questions to think about:

The emotion or feeling Alexandra felt, was it, love, in any way??

Do you feel that the physical ecstasy, she was experiencing(imagining), was the main reason why she was obsessed with the whole thing??

Was she really experiencing it, or everything was in her head/mind??

After agreeing to the marriage, why did she commit suicide after night??

Human Talk #3: How can we all evolve in a much faster pace -Intelligence vs Trust

The Unconventional Monk25 Comments

As an evolved person, you will consider yourself unique and special, the same as everyone around you. You have definite purposes in life and you don’t feel the need to compare yourself with others. You will never do any nasty things and disguise it as “ego”. You won’t compete with anyone, as you are aware that only you can do the things intended for you.  

If you want to evolve yourself without much struggle, there are only two ways, as shared by many spiritually enlightened gurus: either you have enormous intelligence or you have enormous trust. What may be the easiest way? what may be hindering us from having enormous trust or enormous intelligence.

To evolve with enormous intelligence, we should be open and willing to learn and unlearn continuously from all the experiences and situations, the universe will be putting us into, in order to facilitate the process. To evolve with enormous trust, we should be able to keep aside skeptical mind and start blindly trusting the universe-the messages, the presence and even the blessings and keep on doing things as per our intuition. Though it seems easy to do, both options are challenging to follow initially. But once you learn to do it, both the options become very easy too.

There are many around us who are spiritually talented and evolved to a higher extend from many lives of learning, but unaware of it during their current life. Every learning they have is stuck inside them because for some reason they remain too skeptical in this life to realize their gifts. They just need to take that one step of blind trust and magic will happen 😊 .

So don’t bother whether you are evolving with intelligence or trust. As long as you are evolving nothing else matters and strive only for that 😊

Let me continue with the story of Samantha. Read Human Talk #2 for continuity

As you all may remember, Samantha & I had a very special relation. After reading the first part, many had asked me why did I leave her and moved away to another city, if she was so special. Actually, I don’t have an exact answer to it. I was still hung in a relation from 3 years ago, not willing to let it go. For me, Samantha was the person who was keeping me sane and alive during that phase and as per her, I was the same for her. But I believe either I took her for granted or never realized her value then. I was very excited when I received a good job offer from another city, where my ex-lover was also settled. I was still under the blind idiotic belief of revamping that relation even after no contact with her for the last three years. when i told Samantha about the offer, she immediately told me that I should go, since she knew how much I wanted to go and meet my ex. And that is how I shifted.  

She used to travel to my city in between for her official works and we used to have good times as earlier. Meanwhile, incidents happened in my life which busted the bubbles of blind love inside my mind and brought me into reality. Similar to the pattern followed by majority love failure guys, I was living with a pseudo hatred for all women and strong disbelief towards the system called marriage😊 . Then our final meeting happened.

I was fed up with my life in the city and was planning to return to my native place. Informed Samantha about it and she told that she wanted to meet me before I shifted and the next day itself she flew in. Next two days we really had a blast: got drunk, danced around and laughed our hearts out. She had her return flight the next morning and the final night, she was drunk than normal. She was lying down in my lap and was still cracking jokes over some old stories. During the hysterical laughs, she asked very casually “ Hey, Idiot…I am just too bored with this lonely life. It is too depressing. I want to make you depressed too. So let’s get married “.She was still laughing after saying this, but I was taken aback and got very confused. Seeing me shocked she asked again laughing “ Why man, you won’t marry me then “.I got very serious all of a sudden and made big statements like “ I don’t trust women any more. You are the only woman I like now, coz I don’t think about your gender when we are together. I will never get  married …”.She suddenly got up, hugged me and told me “ Hey, stupid..don’t you know me? I was just pulling your leg. Relax !! “. To be frank, I was so relieved then. We kissed, hugged and slept as we always used to do.  

Morning even though I wanted to drop her, she insisted on taking a cab. Before she started, she hugged me and told” You know, you are a very special person. You will realise your value and start treating yourself properly one day “.She gave me a tight hug, kissed me on my cheeks and forehead and left. I had a very heavy heart after she left, but was very relaxed after I received her normal jovial funny audio message saying that she has boarded the flight. And that was the last time I met her and heard her voice.

There was no message from her for the next few days and I couldn’t get her on calls, but then it was normal for her. She used to call or message out of the blue since her work involved a lot of travel to remote locations with restricted network access. After a month I got a call which sent shivers down my spine even now after 12 years with its mere thoughts. It was a common friend asking me whether I was aware that Samantha had committed suicide 3 weeks ago, almost a week after we last met !! 

I was shocked, devasted and grief-struck. I called many of our common contacts. Nobody was aware of what had happened. I travelled to Punjab with an address which she had once shared. She was not interested in discussing anything about her family, so I didn’t know anything about them. Somehow I traced her family, met her relatives and learned the shocking fact that she had acute depression since childhood due to losing both her parents in an accident. She grew up under the effect of a lot of psychotic drugs and had trust issues and never was close to anyone. I realized painfully that I was the only one she trusted ☹ and maybe she wanted to try leading a normal life with me. But unfortunately, she masked all those perfectly away from me and never showed any signs of it. I still consider it as my biggest failure and pain in my life till now, that maybe I was responsible to let her die !!

A lot of questions about her disturbed me since then for a long time. Some of them are still left unanswered. Leaving a few questions for everyone to ponder:

How could someone after being so close, mask their worst and painful emotions?

Why somebody has to suffer until their death, even when they are immensely talented compared to the majority around them?

Since this experience prompted me to go into a process of self-awareness, was Samantha meant to be in my life to trigger my evolution?

What may have hindered Samantha from evolving?

 

Human Talk # 2 Who is the strongest: The ones who express all their feelings openly or the ones who always smiles even amidst being depressed themselves?

The Unconventional Monk15 Comments

We as humans always like those who treat us well. Especially the ones who make us feel special & valued and the ones who always smiles at us and show kindness. But have you ever thought, what may be going inside that person: How did he/she learn to be so kind and how can they smile always? Did they have that trait right from birth or they have acquired it seeing others doing it or are they doing it because they know the value of kindness and love!!

They might have been in situations where they desperately wished for a lovely gesture or a kind listener, which they never got then. They might be still carrying the pain of those experiences, still depressed over it. But since they know the value of Kindness & love, they may try their best to give it to others. At what expense they might be doing that is the most concerning question.

Doesn’t mean that everybody is like this. There will be many who are genuinely so happy and who loves to spread happiness and kindness. We are talking about the group, who are suffering from inside, but won’t show it outside and meanwhile even try to make others happy.

So, who is the strongest: The ones who are happy inside & spreading happiness or the ones who are suffering inside and still trying to spread happiness & kindness??  

Let me tell you the story of Samantha, someone whose memories still hurts whenever I think about her. I met Samantha when I was working in a metro city in India. A typical Punjabi girl with almost 6 ft height and the built of a man. Yet she was feminity at its best. She was almost my age and pursuing her third Post graduate program when I met her. She already had LLB, BBA, MBA and MSc under her belt and was currently pursuing her MSW. And we met for the first time, while she was trying to be a part of the social service (CSR) initiative of my company since it was needed for her project work.

I was handling those projects, so she was sent to me with her presentation and for the next one hour, she talked nonstop about her ambitions about the project and how she can help us in that. I actually wondered how can somebody remain so active with the same energy level for so long. I was very curious to know more about her. But I was running late for a meeting, so gave my contact details and told her that she will be informed about the selection in a week. Then I got busy with other meetings and by evening when I checked my mobile, there was a message from Samantha asking whether it was possible to have dinner together. Normally I avoid such situations because I always prefer to play safe and avoid situations which may land me in trouble. But for some reason, I couldn’t say No or avoid the message. I messaged YES and the next second she called me and fixed the location and timing. I was very curious and excited at the same time to meet her.

We met at the location as fixed by her, which was one of the famous poolside resto. We got seated comfortably. She was wearing a yellow floral single piece long skirt and I could see everybody’s eyes on her when we were walking. But she was not bothered. After initial chit chats, I asked her “ Why so may qualifications “.She laughed and said, the moment I stop studying, my family will get me married. She told that hers is a big business family in Punjab with many industries and business under their belt. She was the only kid and ultimately the only heir to all these. So they were looking forward to get her married and give the business to both of them. She didn’t want to get married and reached a final agreement with family like “ Till you want to study you study. Once you are done with studies, then marriage “ and hence she was choosing one course after the other.

We had a very good time together and many more like that and within the next few months, due to some circumstances, she moved into my apartment. I was a bachelor and had a single bedroom flat then, So we used to share the same bed. My friends used to pull my legs, most of the time out of jealousy. All they could see and say was how gorgeous she was and what all we might be doing in bed 😊

But the fact was we had a special relation, something which was tough to understand for an outsider. We used to kiss each other, but that was the kiss of a friend. We used to hug each other and sleep, without the slightest sexual feeling. I still remember coming fully drenched in rain one night, and getting drunk, and hugging & sleeping and realizing in the morning that we are naked.  She used to tell me all kind of sexual tips. I used to do everything for her, including the most private of the things. We were like the best soul partners, one soul and one body.

She had a lot of very short relations in between and I was still playing the role of a broken heart Romeo, over a love failure I had three years ago. And then I had to move to another city. I left the apartment to her and moved out. She visited me a few times after that, we had a blast whenever she came except the last time I met her. She asked me a few questions casually then, to which I replied and then she left.

We never met after that. All the questions she asked me when we met last time, and the reason why we haven’t met after that, still rings in my ear and hurts me a lot. But let me share that in the next part…  

Till then questions to think over :  

Is there any chance that Samantha was hiding her emotions?  

What may be the reason why we never met after her last visit, which happened almost 12 years ago??  

Is it possible to have a healthy relationship like this between a man & a lady ??

Human talk #1 What makes us feel more human…Our weaknesses or strengths?

The Unconventional Monk12 Comments

Each one of us is unique and special in our own way with a particular set of weaknesses and strengths inside us. The combination of these character traits keeps on changing every moment, depending on the situation faced and our approach to it. Sometimes we get too scared of the situation, that we forget about our strengths and it is just the weakness part which will act.

How can you control these combinations, so that it will be always in your advantage? Or as a human, is it not possible to control it? When we are on top of a situation or winning over anything/anyone, we feel that we are on top of the world then. Do we feel like a human then or as we are some superior being?

Let me share the story of Adhira, a girl whom I knew since her childhood. As a single kid, Adhira was close to her parents, highly energetic and always with a happy face whenever I saw her. When she was 10 years old, they relocated to another part of the country. I saw her next after 5 years and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I met her. She was with her mother and was shabbily dressed, her hair uncombed and dirty. She was not even bothered about the stink which was coming from the dress she was wearing. I was really shocked to see her like that and was almost in tears.

Her mother told that she started behaving like this since last one year. She started hating to go to school, stopped taking bath, her whole hygiene level went downhill and she lost interest in everything. They took her to many psychiatrists, who put her under all sort of anti-depressant and sleeping pills. But nothing changed, months passed and she was still the same. She stopped talking to her father and tried to stay away from her mother as much as possible. She never smiled or cried for a year, it was always a blank face. Her mother wanted to try getting her back to her childhood good memories and that’s why brought her to visit us and the place.

I felt there was something inside her, which she was hiding vehemently from everyone, including her parents. I tried talking to her and make her cheer up. But she was just unresponsive to everything. I thought, maybe if there is some privacy, she may share things with me since I was like an elder sibling to her. So, we went inside my room and kept it closed. Again, next half an hour, I tried everything I could do to open her up, but alas…she was just too uptight!!

And then it happened…. My driver was just standing outside the window and he was talking to his family over mobile. The speaker was on and the sound was very loud. I moved towards the window and was going to call him to lower the voice, but then I heard his 5-year-old daughter’s voice speaking childishly to him. It was so sweet and innocent that a smile came to my face and I just didn’t want to stop the call. Then I heard a very loud cry and when I turned to that side, Adhira was crying loud and hysterically ran to her and hugged her. She cried and cried for almost half an hour and then she told the incident in between her tears.

She was very close to both her parents. Her mother being a scientist, had to travel in between for conferences. Her father used to take care of her things very well during her mother’s absence and she was very proud of it. And one such night, when she was half asleep, her father came to her room. She could smell an unusual stench of cigarettes and alcohol from him and then HE MOLESTED HER.HIS OWN DAUGHTER…she tried to scream and scream, but even a feeble sound didn’t come out of her. And he went out as if nothing happened

Next morning her mother came. She could not face her. She couldn’t face anyone. And then what became of her in next one year was right Infront of me.

I called her mother inside and told her what happened. To my surprise, she silently listened till the end, without any reactions. Then she stood up and asked me “Can you Pls take care of Adhira for a day. I will return in a day “. I said Yes, and without even looking at her, she went away.

She did return in a day and then the first thing she did was to hug Adhira and both of them cried a lot. She told  why she left last day “I wanted to make myself worthy of hugging my daughter “.She went to her apartment, filed a police complaint against her husband, filed a divorce petition and even threw away all his belongings from the apartment which was in her name and got a restraint order against him before she returned.

Adhira got better after that day. Her mother stayed strong with her and together they fought their way out 😊

Adhira’s story had a happy ending. Not everyone is lucky to have that. Next time will share the story of Samantha, which will definitely put you all in tears (if Adhira has not done it yet)

Few questions till then to think:

If Adhira, was so close to her mother, why did she not share her horrific experience to her, the next day itself?

Why did she become like how she was – dirty & shabby?

Even when psychiatrists couldn’t help her then finally how did she open up?