Conditions 'apply'!

“Only we-two-of-us know, that there is not (isn't) any bullet in this gun!” Said the hero to the girl who deceived him by tricking him into a hotel room, surrounded by a posse of policemen to nab him! And very smartly, she found a chance to empty the cylinder of his gun, just in case... (I saw just one version of the movie 'Don'.. it was the Amitabh Bachhan of first few minutes, who was averse to Banarasi paan.. (Hmm... yet another conditioning!).

But, that hero's brains could not be emptied by that girl! And being trained to 'survive' against odds, most of his waking+sleeping hours, the resources of response to life-threat was far more deepened than that, in we-the-common-people. Now this 'deepening of resources' also involved taking a look at the 'conditioning' of his 'usual-adversaries'... the police, and his own competitors, and the spies of these two who upset all conditions of implied-trust that he invests in 'seemingly-loyal' close ones!

During the early days of my struggle to deepen the response to spiritual potential latent in me, I did find a lot of 'conditioning/s' right within me, to be the foremost thing to be tackled, and that too, all-by-myself-only... if I were to counter this 'conditions-apply' clauses,.... that deterred my spiritual progress!

The food! The body was 'conditioned' by the food I take, and a little later on, the food that I can take in, becomes the 'only-food' that I can take.. a typical case of 'reverse-conditions-apply'... reciprocity of conditions! (The mom 'trains' a child, for example... not to 'trust' anybody around... do not take eatables from 'total-strangers', don't tell 'all' the facts to strangers etc.. The kid initially wonders 'where does this list of items under 'total' and 'all' really end, so as to decide who is to be excluded from 'strangers'?... The kid grows, and then 'decides', ... “may be 'this-mom' deserves to be included in a list of 'partial-stranger' when she does not even 'know' my likes/dislikes, why-I-like/like-not..certain things!”.. And as with total-strangers, proportionate distrust with partial-strangers! Mom-included! Hey, I strayed a bit... back to my food!)..

So, I decided to try with food, the way 'nature' has designed me to eat it... All other life forms are so comfortable with 'natural form of food'.. Those with shearing teeth, tear the flesh, pop it in, and the smaller digestive canal throws out the waste soon-enough before that raw meat stinks inside the warmer-than-room temperature of its body.. Those with masticating teeth, go for slightly higher quality food, vegetables, fruits etc, where the life-energy is not 'second-hand', but single-owner vehicle..

Perhaps, I was tempted to try with 'food' more because, the other places of 'conditions-apply' seemed too elaborate (Patanjali's formulas were expounded too elaborately, while ancient scriptures, traditions, rituals looked too difficult to 'fit-into' present day life-style)... 'Let us see', I said to myself, 'if this one 'removal' of 'conditions-apply-clause' goes well with my body, and it becomes a little more receptive to all these 'elaborate' routes through some short-cut (like , some air-routes are far shorter, even-distance-wise, than the related road-routes, which circles around god-made-mountains, or man-made round-about-routes)'.

The second or third of this food-experiment, envisaged newer 'conditions-to-be-applied' with the boss of the kitchen.. I thought out of the briefest possible 'text' that might include most vital details (not necessarily the 'important' ones, though! Vital is often not going to look important, that is the problem with nature! Ecology, is an outside example, and liver is an ''inside' example... Howizzz-life?, and we say 'depends on the liver'.. Life liver, and kidney's neighbour-hood-liver behave alike here!).. The very exercise of 'trying out' for a brief-text, taught me to admire the 'Yoga-sutras' a little better... Of course, Gita had always been beyond my reach, for its encryption-features!... And the text was... 'Nothing placed on a stove' will land on my meals-plate... When something is said very briefly, most people tend to 'agree' (falling for its superficial simplicity).. The boss of my kitchen was no exception! 'Good,' was the first-response, and added, 'that makes my life-span better used, .. a little more of it outside the kitchen'.. I remained as stoic-as-possible, while my joy within knew no-bounds!... It was much later that the con-sequence was I 'looked' skin-&-bones within a month or so! The physical-exercise part of intensifying the aasanas (postures), and a few pranayams drained the flab at an incredible speed.. The movement around seemed like the smooth flow of a river, or the light feel which the driver of a 'volvo' bus gets when he drives the empty bus to the garage for those few kilometeres from the last-stop... The needs of the body to carry itself around felt lesser and lesser with each day of these practices! Within me, I did regret, that simple logic did not occur to me all along!

After a few months, I discovered so many of the 'conditions-apply' clauses collapsing within me, which had all along put hurdles to my perception-levels, in the name of 'putting conditions' and 'getting-conditioned' to the 'life-style' approved by sheer majority-numbers, and sheer-length-of-time for which it was perpetuated by generations who refused stubbornly to 'look' deep-enough! And for the same reason, I saw wisdom in 'trying' not-to-share my deeper experiences (conditions-apply, works too well, for others, against me!)..

The exuberance of this exhilarating experience, of playing with body, now made me turn my attention towards another subtle body of mine... THE mind! (but that is quite another fascinating story... the diet for mind, cooked and uncooked, has lots of complexities... even the pressure of the pressure-cooker is amazingly unique... )..

Yours, (unconditionally-conditioned),

psn(21st May, 2014)