Strange feeling

Lately I have been feeling that I am moving away from my real being.  This is making me very uncomfortable and sad. But at the the same time, it is allowing me to see what I really am, making it possible to know exactly what I want. Without moving away from my real nature would not have made it possible to see what I really want out of life or define who I really am.

For example if you want to see the earth in total you have to move away from it. This is the only way you could see the earth in totality. I have been struggling with this feeling for quite some time. But we just have to understand that moving away is necessary.

Once you have it good in your thought, the path is laid. you just have to trust the journey.

My daughter's definition of meditation

Let me remind (myself) that my daughter is 8 years old. One day we were having a casual conversation about various things and suddenly it led to talking about meditation. Then my daughter started explaining like this.

Daddy, we have so many feelings in our brain. We have patience, kindness, anger, love, fear etc. All these feelings are like different pieces in a puzzle. But we don't know what those pieces are. She continued, for example we don't know if we are kind or not or how kind we are. Only others have to tell us how kind we are. Similarly we don't know about our anger. Only others have to tell us whether we are angry or not or how angry we are. So she explained meditation is all about knowing all the pieces in your brain and putting them all together. It's like solving the puzzle.

At this point, I understood that it's all about knowing who you really are.

Guy at the bus stop

I always feel curious about how my 8 year old daughter thinks, her thinking patterns, her logic etc. So whenever I get a chance, I keep trying to find ways to know that. Below is the actual conversation that happened with my daughter. I wanted to write this in a conversational mode (my questions and her answers)

Q1: I asked my daughter, Imagine a scenario where you are a guy standing at a bus stop waiting to go for your job interview. You saw another person coming on a bike. Suddenly he lost his balance, fell down and got hurt badly. what would you do? Would you go for the job interview or save him.

A1: I would help the guy who is hurt instead of going for the job interview

Q2: I wanted to increase the toughness in decision making. I said, you have been waiting for your dream job for more than 7 years and its a sure shot which means that if you attend the interview, you will get your dream job. What would you do now?

A2: I would still go and help the guy who is hurt because life is more important than a job

Q3: I increased the difficulty further. I told that, YOU, who is waiting for the job interview, are from a very poor family. You have two siblings, mom and a dad to feed. They are waiting for your job so that they can have basic life necessities. Now what would you do?

A3: Now I will go for the job interview because feeding or giving life to 4 people is important than saving one. So definitely job interview

Q4: I Increased the difficulty further. I said, YOU, who is waiting for the job interview, are not from a poor family. Your family is not dependent on you for their food. But the guy who fell down from the bike is a really bad guy. You already know that he has hurt several people. You really wouldn't want to save him. Now what would you do?

A4: I would still go and save the guy who is hurt. As an example, if there is a bully trying to hurt other people, we need to save the person who is bullying and the person who is getting bullied. Because we don't know why the bully is behaving that way and what made him to bully other people. So I would still go and save the guy who is hurt

This answer just blew my mind. One surprised dad.