Calmness of the Quest

The girl was chanting an ancient esoteric mantra, sitting in a serene pose, letting the sea breeze and tiny droplets adorn her presence. 

A middle aged man who was strolling along the beach got pulled towards her silhouette.

He didn't try to intervene the meditative trance of the girl who looked surreal.
He sat beside the girl, careful not to disturb her communion with the divine. 

The girl after few minutes, rubbed her palms, opened her eyes, and looked at the man. The man felt the powerful gaze of the girl peering at his soul.

The girl offered the man few sweetmeats, which he gladly accepted and started to relish.

Man : I felt immense calm emanating from you. Apologies, for intruding into your space.

Girl : No Problem. It's the divine will.

Man : How long, have you been chanting?

Girl : Since the sun shone on the shore. 

Man : Hahaaa. I meant when was the first time you chanted or meditated?

Girl : Since the sun shone on the shore. Maybe you are trying to put the time-space continuum on my tendencies. Anyway, let's first understand your motivations to engage with me.

Man : I don't have any

Girl : Are you sure?

Man : I am financially abundant. I have all the luxuries of life. I came to the beach for calmness. Looking at you I am tempted to surmise that you are an embodiment of calmness. Hence, I am still here. Are you content with your life? What do you do?

Girl : Let's unpack one thing at a time. So, financial accomplishments have failed to provide you the serenity which you are seeking here. And, to your surprise you also have an epiphany that due to the luxuries of your life you are driven to seek peace. So, you are grateful for your material gifts and that has enabled you to this quest of calmness.

Man : Indeed!

Girl : Can you flip your journey?

Man : What do you mean?

Girl : There is a calmness in this quest. Calmness resides in the quest of calmness. 

Man : This sounds like a play of words. Yet, I might have got your message.

Girl : Sir! In this quest you will cross few levels. Keen Observation, Introspection, Awareness, Mindfulness. This is the Quest.

Man : When we observe, it's sometimes unsettling and we lose grip with mindfulness. 

Girl : In Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna says, 
"asanśhayaṁ mahā-bāho mano durnigrahaṁ chalam
abhyāsena tu kaunteya vairāgyeṇa cha gṛihyate"

O mighty-armed son of Kunti, what you say is correct; the mind is indeed very difficult to restrain. But by practice and detachment, it can be controlled.

So, Sir! Practise.

The man bowed down in reverence towards the wise girl. As, he stood up, the beach was devoid of any human existence till his eyesight could gaze. The girl had vanished in broad daylight.

The man kept questioning the encounter. Was he dreaming? He wasn't.

Like all pleasant experiences, he thought, "let me stay with the message & its feeling". This is my calmness.
Calmness of the Quest.

A Clean Slate

Human beings are more than nature or nurturing.
Every human comes with immense potential to make everything a reality, whatever he/she can think and put his/her attention towards.

Now, all of us, are surrounded by so much noise of society, its bundle of one-size-fits all processes & guides, that we cease to access our own individual source of authenticity. We start becoming copy of a copy of a copy, that too with our individuality smeared across each copy!
Who gains? 
Greed of Society!
Who loses?
Need of Society!

“He, who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how.” - Viktor Frankl

Each one of us, have different 'Why's', our own 'Why'!
Once we figure that out, we can write any script on our clean slate. Yes, we need to erase every impression of the societal conditioning before we can start chalking about our life plans. We need to seek originality, this requires utmost honesty with our true self; which is the 'clean slate'. You can be whatever you put your thoughts, intentions & actions to.
There is no need lamenting your flaws, lack of privilege, unique circumstances or any such constraints, which seem to bind your tether to the state of inertia. Your authenticity stems from your rough edges, so stop seeking that ideal situation!

I do understand that we all have different abilities & Pātrata, it's wise to understand what could give us the maximum returns for our labour & time, that being said, it's just a constraint, nobody can stop someone who has decided not to quit! 

Daily Gratitude Affirmation for 'Jivatma'

The universe provides me everything I need. 

Its timing is just perfect. 

Food, clothing, shelter, knowledge, joy, entertainment, sensual pleasures 

and everything amongst them is provided by a diligent mechanism 

to nurture the 'Jivatma' and dispel the darkness of ignorance. 

Universe is listening to you. 

Be sincere and clear, 

universe will send everything your way. 

Caveat is you need to start treading the path, 

universe doesn't knock on doors, 

it meets you at the highway of life. 

Now, it's your choice to stay at home and be foolishly wishful 

or step out take a bus/auto/metro 

or drive your own car 

or else book an Uber! 

But you need to be on the way to meet your gifts coming along

Catch-all and Destiny : Just a Matter of Measurement

Is there anything called Destiny?

Source : https://towardsdatascience.com/how-are-logistic-regression-ordinary-least-squares-regression-related-1deab32d79f5

In linear regression, ε(random error term) here is the catch-all for whatever we are missing out by not measuring & capturing in the model[1].
This means there is scope for improvement and making the model less random. So, as we keep on including more independent variables (predictors/features) our model would have less random error.

Now, how is all this connected to destiny, you may say? Well, in that case, please watch the video at the top of the post again.

Here, Sadhguru[2] says that a lot of events were attributed to 'destiny/God's will' in the era gone by, as they didn't have access to science & technology in the scale we have access to, currently.
Now, we can pretty much point out causes of illness/accident/death/... to something known to us.
So, this is a measurement problem and not some esoteric idea of Destiny.
In other words, "what's gets measured gets managed"

In essence, this is what modern machine learning & AI is also about. They keep on studying tons of data to come up with better models. What the model can't explain is error or catch-all or Destiny (if I may say so!)

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